My husband and I just spent a week in Antonio's Rome apartment. The place is attractive. The owners have put considerable effort into making it an appealing property. The walls seem freshly painted, and the place is comfortable. After a hot day of touring, it was always refreshing to return to our air-conditoned place with the great terrace overlooking the Vatican. We can highly recommend it to other Rome visitors. Before our arrival, Antonio was good about giving us recommendations to local restaurants and sending us maps, all very appreciated. He also was good about responding when we had questions or concerns, though we never did meet him. He had his cleaning woman, I think, meet us when we arrived. And when we asked for an iron (no ironing board in the place), he had some other acquaintances deliver them.

Having used Airbnb on numerous occasions, I'm discovering that often owners often neglect considering the guest's perspective. It would be helpful to have instructions about how to use some of the equipment, especially if the rentor isn't from the same country. We could have used this kind of assistance so we didn't feel we had to contact Antonio continuously to ask him to answer our questions. This led to a misunderstanding when Antonio purchased a new umbrella for the terrace. We had left it open when we went out since no one suggested that it wasn't safe to do. We have two umbrellas in our windy SF Bay area yard that we leave open all summer. So it was a surpise to us when Antonio's umbrella disappeared while we were visitng Pompeii one day. As we discovered later, storms can arise quickly in that area and depart just a fast. But in the meantime, they can create some damage. This information wasn't conveyed to us, but we were blamed for the umbrella's departure. We assume the wind must have picked it up and distributed it elsewhere. It was an unfortunate ending to an otherwise satisfactory Airbnb experience.