WHAT WENT WELL
Location! The flat is right above the best panino place in all of Florence and a mere moments’ walk from all of Florence’s mayor attractions. You’re literally seconds away from Uffizi. It has everything you need if you’re backpacking, the size is perfect if you plan on spending most of your time outside and even if you don’t, the sofa-bed is huge and should prove enough. Luca provided all the necessary information months in advance so I got no complaints from my interactions with him. We spent about 28 nights in here and for the most part we felt safe. Have in mind that due to the panino place being so popular, if you’re not used or familiar with street noise this place might be as comfortable for you.
WHAT COULD HAVE GONE BETTER
The check-in was a bitter start to our stay. I forwarded all the details of my arrival to Cristina, the apartment manager, months in advance but I was told to forward them 4 days prior instead, which I did. I have the impression that this lady never fully understood how we were arriving as just hours before arriving she was still asking about our “train” even though the details specified even the flight number.
Didn’t give it too much thought and notified her of our every move from the moment we walked out of the airport, there was a huge traffic jam while we were in the shuttle and then our taxi driver (who was a very old man) decided to do another run with us still on ours. Needless to say, this all delayed the time we agreed with Cristina but was still within the timeframe advertised. So up to this point I would’ve been totally fine with Cristina having to go and post-pone our check-in, as she told us she had another one soon… Instead she simply told us that she had to leave and that she was sorry… that was it. I guess the other check-in was for more important people or something and I always give the benefit of the doubt for these situations, but spending over 14 hours on flights only to be left stranded is by no means an expected welcome… After basically yelling to the taxi driver, we managed to arrive rushing and were barely able to check-in.
The communication with her was almost null, this was our first Airbnb experience so we played safe and bought all our consumables, etc. We only ever communicated with her when something happened, which leads me to my next point…
WHAT WENT HORRIBLY WRONG
So there is a sign at the door of the apartment that says, in both English and Spanish that power outages happen and there’s no possibility for immediate restoration so it is advised to turn everything off before leaving. I’m not sure if this was unintentional, but in both of the languages mentioned the sign implies that we can expect power outages (and that’s totally fine). We didn’t see a power outage until new years’ eve, when the power was restored after perhaps 15 minutes. At this point we finally understood the purpose of the sign… or so we thought. Turns out that we woke up one day to no power at all, but we had a train to catch early in the morning, so we rushed to the station and didn’t think much of the outage because of the sign at the door, thinking it would be restored by the time we came back (late that night) just like it happened in new years’ eve… we were wrong. We arrived late at night to no power, I contacted Cristina immediately and after being told “sorry” a good 10 times, we were constantly questioned about how it happened and that we would only see it restored in the morning… We come from a country that averages 31 degree Celsius, so spending a night with no power (hence no heat) at -4 Celsius was quite a risk for us. Luckily that day we had another trip, so we didn’t hesitate to leave the apartment early in the morning and decided to spend the night somewhere else at Rome (our trip for that date) that night, before risking another cold night. Luckily Cristina managed to restore the power, now this time insisting that we “should have told her in the morning and not the night”. I can see reviews here specifying this issue since 2013, so I’m not sure what the constant questioning is about, especially after having spent over 20 days without a single outage. My girlfriend and I ended up frostbitten because of that night, but we ended up taking it as just a bad experience on a good place.
Worth the money!
Overall, Lucca’s place is great and I wouldn’t mind booking it again if it wasn’t for our interactions with Cristina. I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything that happened, but I also need to remain honest, even more so because of this being our first Airbnb experience. The place is in good condition as far as kitchenware, bathroom utensils, etc. goes. I think the only thing we saw that showed some wear was a broken coffee cup handle, for which my girlfriend came up with the suggestion of buying 2 more cups and leaving them there after we were gone (we were going to spend some time there, so we needed them nevertheless).