We stayed at the apartment for five weeks in February and March 2022.
Cristi, the son of Giovanni acted as the host, all contact was with him. He was very nice, he picked us up in a central location close to the house after we had arrived. He was always very friendly and welcoming he responded quickly to our questions and problems. He was a great host.
The apartment is equipped with a lot of love to the details and in a very cozy manner. As one could already see from the photos, it is quite pretty. It is also a very clean apartment. It doesn’t have any smell, and the bathroom has a well functioning aeration. The dishwasher, fridge, stove and laundry were functioning. The Wifi was very stable during the whole time. This was an important point for us, as we were working remotely from the apartment.
The apartment is located close to Mercato Vucciria. This is a place where a lot of bars are and there are parties during the night with very loud music. Many days, they were starting around midnight and ending around 3 or 4 in the morning. We used plastic earplugs and overhead noise-cancelling headphones, but sometimes the music was just too loud. One of us would move to the small room with the small bed in order to find sleep. Also, sometimes people yell in the streets at night and seem to get into a fight. Obviously, this is nothing Cristi can do anything about. Nonetheless, it affected the quality of our sleep quite much and thus the quality of our stay in the apartment.
The electricity in the apartment was a little shaky. The fuse would blow when we turned on multiple electric devices at the same time. For instance, if the heating was running and we used two burners of the stove, it would blow, or when we used the dishwasher and the laundry at the same time. We could work around this by simply not using multiple devices with heavy electricity use at the same time.
More noticeable, in the third week, I felt an electric prickle when touching the (metal) sink in the kitchen. Sometimes it was there and sometimes not. I also felt it sometimes when I touched the fridge or the metal parts of the dish washer. I made Cristi aware of it. He responded very quickly and already two working days later he came over with an electrician in order to inspect and fix the problem.
We had also reported the problem with the fuse before and they exchanged the fuse from 18 Ampere to 25 Ampere. They checked the stove and told us to only use the kitchen wearing shoes. Round about an hour after they had left, I used the sink. Although I was wearing shoes as instructed, I got a heavy electric shock when touching the faucet.
I notified Cristi and the electrician would come over again two days later. In the meantime we turned of the fuse whenever we were using the kitchen to prevent getting another shock. In the end the electrician found out that there was electric current on the electric water boiler in the bathroom. He exchanged the heating rod, which had been heavily affected by limescale. After that he showed me that there was no electric current. The problem was finally fixed.
So, this is both a good and a bad story: On the bright side, Cristi proved to be a good host by reacting so quickly. On the other side, it would have been better if I hadn’t gotten an electric shock in the first place, as this is very dangerous.