My husband and I had a wonderful stay at Stefano & Giovanna's place.
Giovanna was a lovely host. Very easy to communicate with and very accommodating. The apartment building was so lovely. It had a wooden main door, a courtyard, and it was decorated with lots of plants. Giovanna and Stefano's place is on the 2nd floor. It was tastefully furnished, cozy, clean and was just the right size for two of us. It was also well equipped, too. Personally, it had everything we needed. For example, for us carry-on travellers, easy access to a washing machine really counts, but the apartment even had a drying rack! I thought that was quite thoughtful :-) Giovanna so kindly provided us some pasta, pasta sauce and coffee, and the cupboard in the kitchen was filled with essentials like seasoning, oil and vinegar, which really helped our eating style.
There are a lot of restaurants nearby along the canal. There was a list of restaurants made by the host, and we went to one of the places in it for dinner. It was so good that we went back there for lunch, and the lunch was even better! (It's called Osteria Le Vigne, and at lunchtime was full of locals, which is a good sign.) If you read Italian and are a bookworm, there is a hip bookshop just around the corner.
There is also a lovely deli on the same street. Along with beautiful meat and cheese, they had some packs of nice salad leaves in the fridge near the door.
The flat is located in a very popular, lively area of Milan, so it does get pretty noisy at night. But we knew what we signed up for when we booked the place, so it was no problem.
If you are flying into Malpensa Airport like we did, I recommend taking Malpensa Express. It's quicker and more comfortable. I've taken an airport shuttle bus in the previous trip, but it took ages to get to the city centre. By Malpensa Express, only 40 minutes to Cardona Station. The difference in fare is 5 euro; a single ticket to Milan centre is 13 euro for Malpensa Express and 8 euro for shuttle bus per adult at the moment (Feb 2018). The flat is within a 5 minute walk from Porta Genova metro station.
We highly recommend Giovanna and Stefano's place in Navigli!