I travelled to Venice with my 11 year old son on 16th of May. The entire stay was a very negative experience and I would not stay here again, or advise anyone else to.
Due to a medical condition that stops my body from regulating its temperature, it is important I can access air conditioning in warm climates, and this is one of the reasons I booked this property. On arriving, I found the property to be very hot and I needed to adjust it. Despite being advertised as having air con, the controller had been removed from the property. I had to ask the host for it and she told me it “wasn’t available” and I didn’t need it. She also she there was a law in Italy that air conditioning should be set at 25°, however, this only applies to public spaces like schools and libraries. She eventually brought the controller to the property but began telling me what temperature I could set it to. I found this bizarre and incredibly controlling. For over €100 a night I think I’m entitled to have whatever temperature I want, particularly as it affects my health.
The next problem was that despite it being advertised as a two bed property, bed linen was not supplied for the sofa bed. When I questioned this, I was told none was available. We looked through the wardrobe for spare bedding to use but everything was musty and smelt unclean. So I had to sleep without any and use a cardigan to cover myself up. Absolutely unacceptable.
On the second day of our visit we returned to find the bedroom had flooded and water was coming through the ceiling. When I contacted the host, she blamed me because I had asked to use the air conditioning?!! I made it clear that the flood had nothing to do with the air conditioning. She came round and it turned out the water was coming from the upstairs neighbour. We had to sit awkwardly as they had a blazing row about it. I actually recorded part of the conversation and sent it to an Italian friend to listen to who said it doesn’t seem like it’s the first time the accommodation has flooded based on their argument.
As we clearly could not stay in a flooded property, i began looking for hotels to move to for the rest of our stay. However, the host told us she had another property and she would take us there. Luckily it wasn’t far, but as my son is autistic and I am disabled, we were already feeling quite stressed out. But we thanked her and settled in expecting to stay here for the rest of our trip. Had we been told otherwise, we would have asked for a refund and moved to a hotel.
The next day, we had taken a train to Milan and received a message from the host very late in the day saying we needed to move back to our original accommodation as she now has new guests coming to the accommodation she’d moved us to. She said we needed to move either that night or first thing in the morning. As we wouldn’t be returning from Milan until quite late, I said we would be ready by 11 the next day. The host was unhappy about this and said we had to be ready to move by 11 exactly so she had time to get things ready for the new guests, as if we were the ones inconveniencing her!
The accommodation we moved back into clearly was not ready for people to move back into. The bedroom was still very damp and had not been cleaned up properly.
The entire experience was a nightmare and absolutely ruined our trip due to the stress involved with packing up and moving twice, staying in unfit accommodation and the fact there was no suitable place to sleep.
I really don’t advise people to stay here.