This is a large, bright, airy and open apartment with lovely views of the Duomo, Florence, and the surrounding countryside. The bed is comfortable and the outdoor patio is lovely. The location is great for people who want to be a little bit further away from the hustle and bustle of the touristy areas of
The apartment did have some items that we found wanting. For instance, there were very visible and ugly stains on both couches. Additionally, there were no paper towels or wash cloths in the kitchen. Our host took us on a rushed check-in process and we had to figure out how to control the heat and how to lock the doors on our own. There is no house manual, which would have been helpful with instructions for how to lock the door and run the washer. The top flight of the stairs does not have a light switch for the hallway, which meant we had to use our cell phone flashlights until we could get to the light switch. Finally, the hot water boiler (also used for the heating radiators) had a gassy smell. These were all minor inconveniences, but understandable given that we were traveling in a touristy city in a foreign country.
Unfortunately during our stay at the apartment we discovered that the hot water and heat was no longer working on the second to last day of our stay. We had a 12 hour tour to Siena that day, and upon return we wanted to quickly shower before heading out to dinner reservations. Instead, we found no heat and hot water. I played around with the boiler for a little bit we messaged our host alerting that we didn't have hot water and the heat didn't work. Our host didn't get back to us until after we checked out the next morning, at which point we were headed to the airport in Pisa.
Going 36 hours without being able to take a warm shower while traveling internationally is very frustrating, especially when you've paid for an apartment that should have hot water to shower with. We requested a refund of our last night's stay, to which the host refused, claiming that we should have either (a) called a 24 hour number that we were not told about or (b) gotten in touch with AirBnB. The lack of sympathy and understanding to a rather large problem that developed with the apartment has been disappointing. And so we've escalated the issue to AirBnB. Hopefully other travelers will have better luck with this place, as there are a lot of redeeming aspects to it!