The apartment is wonderful. It's huge, and was definitely too big for the two of us. But we knew that, and honestly, we booked it for the terrace as I had set my heart on having an outside balcony overlooking the canal - not realising that there are not so many of these in Venice (damn those old movies). I booked it without really looking into it properly.
Once I did - the weather forecast was not good (March) - so a terrace is not much use. And it is also further away from the center than I wanted.
I wanted to cancel the booking, but my partner really wanted to stay there so I left it.
In short:
Valentina host 103 apartments - you can work that out for yourself.
The heating was all turned off when we arrived and not easy to use. We were quite cold the last two nights as we could not get it on at all. Valentina's cut-off time is 7pm.
It’s 30 minutes to St Marks - not 20 as they said. Bear in mind there are no taxis, and late at night - it's walk or nothing. We unfortunately needed the Emergency Room in the middle of the night and it simply was not possible. Not a normal occurrence, but....
The single-use plastics in the apartment! Enough to kill a small whale! Stop that! Why would you wrap a dishwashing tablet or a dish sponge inside a second layer of plastic???
There was *nothing* in the apartment in terms of condiments etc. No salt, pepper, sugar or oil. Never mind anything else. I’ve stayed in probably 50 AirBNBs and almost all of them leave these things. Covid or not, let people decide for themselves what they want to use. You don’t even have to buy this - people leave it behind. I really hope they're not throwing this away after each person leaves and that someone gets to use them.
The instructions nearly gave me a nervous breakdown - “You will be fined for this, you will be fined for that”. I felt like I was going on boot camp.
Anyway, although I spent time listing them, these were small niggles. And I say them in order to give feedback mostly. It is an awesome apartment. Definitely too big for the two of us, and like many others have mentioned, maybe only good if you’re there for the Biennial. I would consider coming back again - but only in the summer.
It's an amazing apartment.