Unfortunately the apartment was absolutely not as expected. It is more appearance than substance.
First thing is, the host did not even contact us before our arrival. We had to contact him in order to get information. This is not the norm when booking on Airbnb, most hosts contact their guests first.
When we arrived there, he left very quick. Online they announced a welcome gift, such as free water or similar, but there wasn’t.
As we checked the bedrooms we discovered that the bed sheets were dirty, there was hair from previous guests all over the place. In the bathrooms, on the beds, on the floor and even in the kitchen. The towels were not clean and full of stains. The bathroom cabinets were dusty and there have been cosmetic products forgotten by previous guests. There were no bathmats. In the toilet inside one of the bedrooms was no soap. There was no coat hook in the whole apartment. This is very important, especially for the bathrooms so you can at least hang your towel there. Only 2 toilet paper rolls. The shower cabinet is suuuuper tight, even for skinny people. So in case you weigh a little more, you will not be able to close the cabinet.
The dishes in the kitchen were dirty, too. We had to clean them ourselves for usage. The kitchen cabinets, the table and the fridge have not been cleaned up, everything was blotchy and sticky. The water heater was full of limestone.
The terrace is literally a catfish. On pictures it looks all well restored, but in reality it isn’t. The grill was dirty, greasy and heavily rusted. It was not even covered for protection.
The chairs and table were rusted and dusty, too.
We used the washing machine, which was a mistake. I’d rather pack my dirty clothes in my suitcase again, than do the laundry there. After taking them out of the washing machine our laundry smelled very bad, meaning the washing machine also hasn’t been cleaned up.
We called him to ask for the cleaning lady to come again, but he wanted to send her the day after, because he was told by the cleaning ladies that everything is clean. The only thing that convinced him for coming, was sending pictures of the dirty places, especially the beds, explaining that we do not want to sleep on dirty bedsheets the first night. After that he came one hour after with a cleaning lady, which did not do a good job. She used the vacuum without the vacuum-cleaner attachment, which is ridiculous. The mop was old and dirty and left a bad smell.
All in all we we are really happy that we only had 2 nights to stay before we left Creta. Luckily we spent the majority of our trip in another house which was super clean!
I would never recommend this apartment again, even though the host was polite, he should pay more attention to his cleaning ladies and check if everything was clean enough.
I would also advise the host to call his guests in case of problems, instead of texting them via iMessage. He replied fast, but still it is more polite and caring to call them, when trying to find out such issues and fixing them.
Still the location of the apartment was very good, you have everything you need very close, such as bakeries and supermarkets etc. Heraklion City is not far away and Ammoudara Beach is only 2km away, which is perfect.
With the car you have a 15 minutes drive to the Heraklion Airport.
The air conditioner worked very good, we had WiFi and watched Netflix, too. There was a private parking lot for the guests, so we never had to look for a park.
Cleanliness and equipment is everything. If this was given, the apartment could have been worthy.