My boyfriend and I took a long 18-hour train journey to get to Carla's apartment from Amsterdam. Had a connecting train to catch in Bologna and missed the train by only a few seconds. My cell phone was not getting service so I was unable to reach Carla to let her know of the delay and still did not work once arriving in Florence. We felt terrible to have to make her wait an extra hour without being able to communicate with her, and apologized profusely upon arriving at her place. The apartment was in a great area, with so many restaurants very close by and within a few blocks of the Duomo. The location however, seemed to be the best part of our stay there. While the apartment has everything that one might need, there were a few issues that we found to be a bit uncomfortable, like the super hard mattress, the toilet was working but there was a leak from the walll every time it flushed and a fine mist of water would then come down from the ceiling. We were told that the plumbing issue would be fixed upon our leaving and so after only being there a few minutes, she seemed very concerned to know what time we would be leaving. After traveling for so long, it didn't feel so great to have the host ask right away when we would be getting the heck out of there. We also were bit by many mosquitos during our stay which apparently is not exclusive just to her place but is pretty common for Florence. Carla made sure to check in and see how we were, but again wanted to know what time we'd be gone. We decided to stay an extra night in Florence and moved to a Hostel on the other end of town. We assured her we would be out between 10:30 and 11:00 and at 10:35 she was there, she honestly seemed a bit annoyed to still have to deal with us. We tried again to be as apologetic as possible about the initial late arrival and left her a nice note and flower to thank her for the stay and for her understanding. But the truth is we did not feel very welcome at her place. It almost felt like we were amongst the tourists that get churned out one after another that she did not really care about that much on an individual level. As in, "Next Please." At 10:35 we were trying to call a cab and get our luggage down the stairs and the attitude she gave us was pretty clear that we were getting the "boot" (no italian pun intended.) We even tried to get rid of our trash which she grabbed from us and insisted on disposing of herself. The cab she then called for us ripped us off. Not the most pleasant experience, if you stay with her our advice is, DON'T BE LATE.