This is actually a spacious and mainly clean apartment in a great part of Naples.
The problem was Maddy failed to tell us that her place is next door to a flat that is a building site. We were woken, early, to the noise of what sounded like drilling and a sledgehammer banging relentlessly on our bedroom wall. I went round and knocked on the door and it was opened by two workmen on a building site covered in dust.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the sounds of the Naples streets - something we love and the reason we chose her centrally located flat. It was hardcore building work. She eventually told me that on weekdays it's normal for them to start at 9am and there's nothing she can do about it.
Maddy knew this work was going on but chose not to tell us. She was very clear at communicating with us about everything else but very obviously omitted to mention this. I had arrived late the night before with my 3 children. Our plane was delayed - we kept Maddy informed at every stage of our journey - so to be woken like this was horrific.
Maddy asked me to leave an extra €15 for my late arrival which initially I was willing to do. When we realised the next morning that her flat was basically uninhabitable on account of the work next door I withheld the €15.
Aside from that one of the legs on our bed had broken off and had been reattached by someone using masking tape so it was wobbly and unstable. There was also some blood on the sheets in my son’s room.