We had to meet a third party at the apartment to be given the keys to the apartment. This made it difficult to time out when we were coming from another major Italian city by train. We had train delays, and got lost navigating Florence streets. When we finally got to the apartment we had to wait for maybe 20 minutes to meet up with the third party. The street that the entrance to the apartment was on felt a little unkept, so we didn’t enjoy waiting on the street to meet the third party. I would suggest installing a lock box for the keys which would be a smoother process for all parties involved.
We had spoken to the host who told us we could leave our luggage in the apartment after checkout so that we could enjoy our museum tour the following day, and we could retrieve the luggage when we were done. We were told the cleaning could occur and our luggage wouldn’t be in the way. The cleaning guy had no idea what we were talking about because the host and him never discussed the arrangement. The cleaning guy said he would move our luggage to another apartment and then we could text him when we were done with the tour and he would meet us at the building to get our luggage from this other apartment. That felt really sketchy so we ended up renting luggage lockers nearby the following day.
We were pretty startled when a woman unlocked the door and let herself into the apartment, despite the fact that we had taken possession of the apartment. It made us feel like our privacy had been invaded and made us feel unsafe. I was shaking and crying from the event and we considered ditching the Airbnb and finding a hotel instead. The Airbnb host did communicate quickly to tell us that it was the owner and “he” (the owner) wanted to make sure the apartment was ready for us. The host kept saying the owner was a “he” when the person who entered the apartment was a woman. That also made us feel strange. It seemed like the owner didn’t know that we had taken possession of the apartment, however, if the owner knew the place had been rented, and our check in time started at 3 PM, there should have been no reason for the owner to come into the unit at 6:30 PM. It was very unsettling.
The bathroom had ants on the floor around the shower, the bathroom sink was clogged with water when we brushed our teeth, and we did a load of laundry and the washer leaked water (we suspect a bad seal on the washer). Other than that, we felt like the apartment was nicely renovated, the air conditioning worked well (which we appreciated) and we enjoyed the view of the Duomo.
Our overall experience was negatively impacted by: talking to so many involved parties, the owner walking in on us, the ants, clogged sink, and leaking washer. I did notify the host of the issues we observed so they could be corrected for future guests.