The plus sides: The apartment was in many ways wonderful. Newly renovated and beautiful, with a perfect floor plan for our 6-member group that needed 3 bedrooms. We walked everywhere we needed to go: to the nearby railway station to go to Pompeii, Sorrento and Vesuvius, and to the city center. The host is very helpful, and the system of opening the doors remotely when we first arrived functioned well.
The downsides: A functioning air-conditioning is needed in Naples in July also at night, and this was only partially the case. The air-con itself was very well functioning and efficient, but it was connected to a motion detector, which is problematic. In principle, this is a brilliant idea to save money and the environment: when tourists are out during the day, the motion detector notices that nobody is in the room and it shuts down the air-con if the tourists “forgot” to do this themselves. However, this is an idiotic thing to have during the night. We woke up 3 times during the first night because it was too hot: as we had not moved when sleeping, the motion detector sent a signal to the air-con to shut down – and it does not send a “turn air-con on” signal when detecting new movement. The air-con could be turned on using the remote control, which is not hard, but at least I wake up to it so that my sleep is disturbed, especially if the control is not within reach. We informed the host about this problem after the first night. She contacted a technician who (after a lot of back-and-forth messaging and waiting for everyone to have left the apartment) checked things remotely, and we were informed that it was OK. I don’t know what was “fixed”, but the 2nd night the same happened in all three rooms instead of just the 1 bedroom the first night, and again we woke up 3 times to turn on the air-con. Clearly, both the host and the technician had great trouble understanding the cause of the problem and what it would take to fix it (e.g. that the motion detector is programmed not to function during the night) even if I explained this many times. After it only got worse after the “fixing” the first time, with no sign that the problem had even been understood and not wishing to spend the day co-ordinating the technician’s arrival, for the third night we solved the problem ourselves using this hack to bypass the motion detector: we put a small piece of paper on top of the transmitters that send the “nobody here – turn off the air-con” signal from the motion detector to the air-con -> the signal did not reach the air-con and we slept well throughout the night.
Another issue that bothered me at the time of reserving the apartment but which turned out to be only a risk and not a real problem: at the time of reserving the apartment, smoking was allowed in the apartment (the host considered this as no kind of problem) – I tried to check whether smoking is still allowed but could not confirm one way or the other. There was no trace of anyone having smoked in the apartment: probably smokers are responsible enough not to smoke inside, but I dislike taking the risk of having an irresponsible chain smoker as the previous guest.
Thirdly, we looked for an apartment in this area, but I am not sure whether I would choose the same area again. It’s a bit rough, and our adult kids were advised by locals that the girls should not return to the area at night without a male companion as a safeguard, and all jewellery should absolutely be removed from sight etc. There were not threatening encounters, but more cautious people may prefer a different area.