The apartment is in a wonderful neighborhood, with nice street views and great light. While in person it is maybe slightly more down-at-heel than in the photos, it was clean and cheerful. Our host allowed us to check in two hours early, which I appreciated. The problem began in our second day in the apartment, when we came home at 5 or so after sight seeing to find there was no running water. When we reached out to our host and to the contact who had checked us in, we were told that there was work going on in the street, that was just part of staying in an old building, and they couldn’t say when it would come back on. After further inquiries, our host said it would be off until sometime the next day, but when I raised concerns about this, she offered to refund us the cost of that night, which seemed reasonable, so we just skipped showering the next morning and used the toilet....lightly. When we returned home late that evening the water was back on (hooray!) but late that night the toilet stopped flushing. We reached out to our check in contact the next morning, who told us he would reach out to maintenance, but did not communicate with us further. Luckily we found a bucket to do low tech flushing. The toilet was still not working when we got home at the end of the day but was functioning late that night when we got home from dinner. Whether maintenance came at 8 or 9 pm or it just started working again is unclear. All of this was not ideal, but would not have led me to write a bad review. Things happen. The reason I cannot recommend this apartment is that the host has failed to follow through on the promised refund over a week later, despite multiple follow ups on my part, including use of Airbnb’s system for requesting a refund. This strikes me as inexcusable. There are lots of apartments in the Alfama. Find a different one, which a more trustworthy host.