I waited a few days after leaving so that I could write this review in a more objective manner. I found the entire experience frustrating and disappointing. At the booking stage, I had to request the reservation twice before getting a reply from the hosts. When I finally did get a positive reply, I had to ask them several times to process the reservation through Airbnb. Communication was in whatever language the host (s) felt like writing in - Italian and French mainly, and often incomprehensible even with Google translate. The day before my final payment, I received a message from Giovanna that she wanted to raise the price of the stay - either *to* 500 euros or *by* 500 euros (for ONE night), again hard to understand due to the need to translate from Italian. I contacted Airbnb to ask if this was something that a host is allowed to do after agreeing to a price and did not get a definitive answer. In any case, when I wrote the hosts to ask for clarification, Beatrice responded telling me to ignore the message from Giovanna and that all was ok. I tried to phone Beatrice - both at the number on the reservation (a UK number for some reason) and at a local Italian number she sent me - but no phone number worked.
When I contacted Beatrice again via Airbnb to ask about check-in, she told me to pick up the key at the bar around the corner and that she could not be there. The morning of check-in, she sent another message saying to ring the doorbell and the cleaning lady would let us in. By that time, I was so full of anxiety about whether or not we would be able to get into the apartment I hadn’t slept.
In the end we were indeed let into the apartment by the cleaning lady. The place was quite nice on the surface, but as we looked a bit closer things just seemed off. Here is a list of issues: we were left 2 towels for 4 people; there was a bottle of body wash in one bathroom and a bottle of hair conditioner in another bathroom, but no shampoo in either bathroom; there were literally dozens of light switches and almost none of them actually turned on a light except in the bathrooms and kitchen; all of the closets were totally full, including in the kitchen where there were open boxes of food (gross); the beds were simply pieces of foam with mattress pads on top, not actual mattresses; there was ONE remote control for THREE air conditioning units in different rooms, which leads to the most problematic issue . At the end of a 35-degree day, the air conditioning in one of the bedrooms did not work. It was impossible to sleep. And neither Beatrice nor Giovanna agreed to speak to me on the phone - although both insisted that the ac was in working order. They suggested that we open a window, which only made things worse because the apartment is between 2 main streets and the noise level is extremely loud.
In short, I paid 400 euros to have a place to sleep for the night and was not able to sleep. I feel that I deserve a refund.