We were very excited to stay in Simone's place, however, we unfortunately were forced to leave due to a problem with the neighbor!
First I'll start with some positives: This apartment itself is beautiful and exactly as pictured. It was very clean, and the view from the deck in breathtaking (the cranes are gone now, so no construction noise). Simone was very kind and communicative and check in was easy. I wish we could have enjoyed this space, as it truly is beautiful.
Unfortunately, we chose to leave after the first night because we did not feel safe. We arrived at the unit around 7:30PM. About 10 mins after arriving there was an aggressive knock on the door. There is no peep-hole so I responded "hello" from inside as we did not want to open the door without seeing who is on the other side. Initially we got no response, and the person just kept knocking. Once my boyfriend responded again "hello" the person mumbled something about noise and left. It's hard to explain, but we both got bad vibes from this interaction. It felt like someone was trying to get us to open the door without seeing who is outside. Especially since we had just arrived and were not being particularly loud. This left us feeling uneasy, but we wrote it off as a neighbor and left shortly after to get dinner and enjoy the rest of our stay. We returned around 11pm and went to bed. At 4AM that night we were woken up to loud banding on our door for about 2 min straight. Given our earlier experience, we both felt throughly spooked. We eventually got back to bed until at 7AM that following morning we were woken up again to someone ringing the doorbell to our unit constantly for about 2 min straight, banging on the door again, and shouting they were going to call the police if we didn't quiet down. We were asleep at the time so we were not making any noise. At this point we decided we had to leave since any time we were in the unit we were being harassed about noise, even if we weren't making any. My guess is that the downstairs neighbor is upset he lives under an Airbnb and has decided to take it out on guests. Prior to our stay, there are only amazing reviews for Simone's place, so I hope we just had a fluke experience.
We messaged Simone after being woken up at 4am to ask if anyone else had reported banging on the door. She said she'd never heard of anything like this happening and offered to contact the building to ensure the main door to the building is being locked. I messaged Simone again the following day to let her know what happened in the morning and to let her know we had left. She was apologetic and again said this had never happened before. I'd like to give the host the benefit of the doubt that we are the first guests to have a bad experience with this neighbor. That said, I think it's only fair to report our experience since this neighbor seems hell-bent on harassing any guests out of the building. I hope we are truly the first and last people to experience this in this unit, as the unit is otherwise beautiful.