We stayed at Melania and Giulia’s place for 5 nights as part of a two-week stay in Italy. When we return we would choose to stay elsewhere.
Pros:
- Location was good. There weren’t a ton of restaurants and cafes in the immediate neighborhood, but we also visited in august and a lot of places were closed for the whole month. It was only about a mile walk anywhere you could really want to go in Florence, so we loved that.
- The air conditioning was very cold throughout the whole flat. We stayed in other places where this wasn’t the case.
- The patio space was nice to have
Cons:
- Check-in: Check-in was difficult for us. We were driving from Abruzzo, and gave Melania a three-hour window of when we would check in the day before arriving. As we got closer, we gave her multiple updates of when we would arrive, including a 40-minute and 10-minute heads up. When we arrived, there was no one to meet us and Melania was unresponsive. After 20 minutes we were able to reach Giulia, who then had to call Melania to call the woman who was supposed to let us in. The woman who let us in was not able to tell us where we could park; street parking was limited and permit-parking only. Also - note that there's a late check in fee after 8pm (some parts of the listing say 10pm).
- Parking: The main reason we booked this place was that it offered parking. When we arrived, the woman was not able to give us information on where we could park and Melania was unresponsive. We called Giulia who said that she didn't know and that she'd call Melania. Melania then told us that we could park in the garage with the name "Mantenuto" on it. When we found the garage complex, there were no names on any of the garages, only numbers. We had to go through each garage door and try to unlock it with the key we had. Melania said it "might" be the second door on the left (it wasn't). We finally found the garage after trying every door. Two days later, we received a call at dinner that we parked in the wrong garage. We had to rush back, where a woman from the complex was upset and waiting because we mistakenly parked in her garage. Turns out, the key that we received opens multiple garage doors. Melania still couldn't tell us which was the correct garage to park in. We tried all the garage doors again and the key opened yet another garage door. The whole ordeal was completely unprofessional and a huge inconvenience.
- Misc: The shower door was broken when we arrived, and was never fixed. We had to shower with no door for the entire time and there were very minimal linens provided so we weren't really able to mop up the bathroom floor which was dangerous. There was no hand soap anywhere when we arrived (we had to buy some); there was also no laundry detergent. The elevator was also broken for a day we were there.