Where to begin???
Let’s start with the good points…seeing as they are oh so few.

The location is AMAZING!!! Literally a 3-minute walk to the Petralona train station (which connects with Metro and Trams and is just 1 (Thesio) or 2 (Monastiraki) stops from downtown Athens!!!) while passing by the telephone store (in case you want to buy phone cards) the supermarket, a pharmacy, a coffee shop and a pastry shop…literally everything you need is along that 3 minute walk!

The Internet service (Cosmote)is AWESOME!!!

The water pressure is very good

That is all for the good part of this review… now let’s talk about the not so good part of this place.

First and foremost, it needs to be clear that this is a basement apt…not a ground floor…basement!

One of the 2 windows in the place had a big hole in it, where the cable for the Wi-Fi passes through, making it possible for mosquitos or other sorts of bugs to enter or crawl in from. We put a plastic bag in the hole in hopes of avoiding that.

The view from the windows is car wheels and the feet of people passing by. Definitely not what I’d define as a good view. Also, you feel that people passing by can look in. For that reason, we kept the shades closed most of the time. Halfway closed during the day, and completely closed during the night. Making the already small room feel even more claustrophobic and dark.

Secondly…we were infested with cockroaches!!! Yes cockroaches!!! At least 1 or 2 very single day! They kept spraying the building, but the bugs all ran into our apt. to escape the spay and ended up dying in our place…some were not quite dead yet…so very gross!!!!! By the last week the roach infestation seemed to be under control. No roaches were seen on the last few days. Hopefully it is not a recurring problem, however there are roaches in Greece, and it is after all a basement apartment, with windows at sidewalk/street level.

Thirdly, every single thing in that place was broken and old, sometimes dirty… we rented a place with a kitchen in the hopes of saving some money by cooking some meals at home…well forget about that…completely!
1. The fridge (a small 3-foot fridge) did not have any shelves. After complaining, the owner ended up bringing us one that was broken but hey…better than nothing right?

2. The coffee machine did not work. He replaced it with an illy coffee machine that takes cartridges. However, it too was dirty, and we could not get it to work either. Purchased coffee cartridges of the same brand but they did not fit in the machine. Never found cartridges that worked in that machine during our 5 week stay there, and not from lack of trying.…so we had to go to the coffee shop every morning for our coffee…thank God for location!

3. The grill cheese toaster was extremely filthy and when we showed it to him, he agreed that we could not eat from it…accused his last guests of not cleaning it and PUT IT BACK IN THE CUPBOARD…you know…for his next guests to clean. He brought us another toaster…just as greasy and dirty as the first one. The power cord appeared to have been cut and repaired with a wad of electrical tape…yeah real safe. Current there is 220v, not sure I’d want to plug that power cord into the socket. We continued to make our toast in a frying pan on the stove top…

4. The oven was a small oven set on a table. It was not a full-size oven. It had 3 elements and an oven. The oven/stove top was not the cleanest…we only used the stove top which took an eternity to warm up enough to fry an egg and toast.

5. The shower hook was broken, so initially we were not able to use the shower properly. Found a screwdriver and some screws in one of the cupboards and repaired the shower head holder.

6. The Air Conditioner worked well… however it was filthy. It did not appear to have been cleaned in some time and was covered with thick dust. Towards the end of our stay the AC began making a constant and repetitive noise. The noise was coming from the air flow vents which direct the air flow right and left. They would get stuck and make a loud clicking sound. However, the remote for the AC became unresponsive, and I could not change the setting. The batteries had died. I looked for batteries in the apartment but could not find any. Swapped the batteries from the television remote and got the AC remote to operate properly.

The pictures really do not represent the apartment. It is miniscule. The bathroom is so inconvenient as there is absolutely no room to put place or hang any clothing. Even the toilet seat has no cover.

The Queen size bed takes up the whole living space. The bed frame is actually bigger than the mattress and protrudes, making the living space even smaller. It took a few days to get used to walking around the bed without banging our shines on the frame.… eventually the ledge became our friend and we used it to place our cell phones, charging stations, MP3 player/speaker, water bottle and book holders.

Personally, with a place that small, I would have gone with a good quality sofa bed that people could close during the day and have a larger living space and place to sit when not sleeping.

There is absolutely no effort put into this place…everything is mismatched and old. We stayed there for 5 weeks in July/August 2021 and it was NOT what we excepted.

We would get up, shower, go get coffees from the local coffee shop, eat an oven-top cooked toast and cheese or pick up a tiropita at the corner pastry shop and get the heck