The location of this apartment is incredible, and it's large and lovely inside. Communication with the host was a real issue, though: I don't think David actually lives in Florence right now, so his father was supposed to be in touch with us about arrival and departure information. The day before we were scheduled to arrive I still hadn't heard anything, though...and the actual day of, we had a hard time finding the right apartment number: there's construction happening right outside, and I was getting hit on by two guys on motorcycles who weren't taking 'no' for an answer. Riccardo (who was meeting us) was standing across the street the whole time but didn't introduce himself or try to help us until we'd walked past twice. I tried contacting him later that evening, too, when we were trying to figure out how to convert the sofa into a bed (we never did figure it out, which was quite frustrating--and the sofas are NOT clean enough for my friend to want to sleep on it directly), but with no success. Check-out is very early in the morning, and you can't leave any bags. If you're staying through until the afternoon or checking into another place later, it's a real issue. (We ended up dropping bags at the train station, which meant paying for storage there as well as spending the time and money for the taxi ride to and from.)

All in all, although I think it would be a lovely apartment to spend an extended period of time at, it was a bit of a disaster for our one night there. I'd been telling my friend (who was traveling with me with her 11 year-old daughter) how great AirBnB is, but she was really unhappy with the experience.