In short: Great location, spacious place and a friendly but nervous host. I would recommend for families, I would not recommend for groups of friends between 18 and 30 old.
The place is on a quiet road with access to a good driveway. The back of the place backs onto the main road so there is a fair amount of traffic noise, especially in the rear bedrooms. Within a few minutes walk, you can be in the middle of St Julians, where there are shops, some excellent restaurants and some clubs.
The place was very clean on our arrival. It’s massive! The main bedroom was lovely, with an ensuite (no shower). The other bedrooms were okay, plenty of room but some of the beds were very small (in the upper room) and some of them were really squeaky. The hosts very kindly made a cot and high chair available. The pool was very well maintained and a real treat first thing in the morning. The place could do with some maintenance; we noticed that a few items (1st floor shower attachement, upper banister, microwave) were on the edge of becoming broken. This made us nervous and is a nice Segway into the only really negative part of the stay…
Before I dive into this part of the review, I will say that I generally found Luke and Noel (Luke’s father, apologies for the spelling!) to be friendly and genuine. However, the check-in process delivered by Noel made me feel uncomfortable. They had clearly had some problems with guests making noise and damaging the property in the past and it felt like they were making that my problem by (politely) threatening us with all sorts of fines and police visits if we broke the terms and conditions (not sure if you can actually make someone sign a new set of terms and conditions after payment anyway?) The most extreme example was Noel telling me that we shouldn’t use the kitchen chairs at night as they are noisy and might disturb the neighbours. Not only was this 45 minute process unpleasant having just got off a plane, but it also made it hard to relax in the place. I was constantly afraid that something might be broken or we might be fined for talking too loudly. Adding to this, we saw either Luke or Noel most mornings and some of our party felt like we were being “checked up on”.
To sum up, on the whole we enjoyed staying at Luke’s place. I would recommend that they either stop hosting on Airbnb if they are not willing to accept the risks or they have a think about how they can improve the check-in process.