There are places you recommend, places you don’t, and then there are the places you love so much that you hesitate to tell others, because you want them all to yourself.
I’m pretty sure we were Claudia’s favorite guests ever, though unfortunately, I expect others have left feeling this way as well. She was out of town when we arrived, so her mother met us and spent a quarter hour showing us everything—where extra towels were, how the washing machine worked, how to open and close the fancy dual-opening windows, etc. But even while she was away, Claudia responded to queries within the hour. We were her guests, not her customers.
I think there are occasionally other places with this level of service, but I’ve never stayed in an apartment that feels so much like a home, and specifically, that has so many BOOKS. Including Wittgenstein. You find a place that has both a pop-up version of The Little Prince _and_ the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, you know you’re not dealing with any old host. AND there’s television for the regular people. AND wifi for the internet addicts. AND, like, beds and stuff. (WHICH were incredibly comfortable—not a given, by any means.)
This is basically the Platonic Ideal of AirBnBs. The only downside is that the bar is set so high that you’re basically ruined for any other places you stay from here on out.