Our communication was with Shanta who’s the co-host and was always very prompt responding to my messages. She was also courteous and tried to be helpful.
Pros:
-The location is great. Pretty easily walkable within 10-15m from the metro and then the apartment itself is in an ideal city-center location on a fairly quiet block. Cute cobblestone streets and plenty of restaurants and nearby shopping. Just a couple of blocks from a beautiful waterside stroll and definitely easy access to several other hotspot neighborhoods.
-The bed was super comfortable
-The kitchen gets great light which makes for an inviting atmosphere in the morning
-The apartment building has families in it and feels overall safe and quiet
Neutral:
-The apartment itself, while having some old european style charm, is unremarkable. It certainly suffices although if you’re looking for something more homey, this might not be it
Cons:
-Upon entering, we noticed an enormous stench of cigarettes. My husband and I are both non-smokers and so this was pretty jarring for us. Shanta told us nobody had been smoking in the apartment and maybe it was from the previous tenant (which we believe to be true). We agreed to open all of the windows and let the apartment air out for the day and see how it was after that.
Unfortunately we couldn't get rid of the smell and it was a huge problem for us both from a personal comfort level and our concern for having an infant in the apartment, as it may have also been from the regular smokers outside the apartment, or potentially a neighbor smoking.
While it's possible we are just very sensitive to this sort of smell, or maybe the apartment usually smells fine, we wound up leaving after our first night to a different airbnb. We also needed to go through airbnb to get our money back since Shanta stuck to her cancellation policy even given the issue.