Maria is the example of a prime Airbnb host. She is very responsive and overly helpful in all of our communication. I could not recommend her enough! We stayed for 3 nights during the first leg of our honeymoon and it was the perfect start to our 2-week trek across Spain. She even went out of her way to provide an itinerary from a local's perspective which was incredibly useful! We ended up checking a lot of activities and restaurants from her list.

The apartment was even better in person than in the descriptions and photos. I'm not sure why some people described it cheap, it was not the experience for me at all. I loved Maria's decor—so much that I wish we could take the apartment with us if we could. She even left us a bottle of orange juice and milk in the fridge, which was very nice of her. Also, I cannot understate how important A/C is during Madrid's humid summers. It was a lifesaver.

Malasana is a fun neighborhood with lots of hip restaurants and bars. I wish we had explored it more instead of trekking to Sol as often as we did.

My only feedback would be to make sure to double check your belongings right before checking out. Even after doing a final sweep twice, I left a very expensive wedding gift from my husband (oh, it hurts to even write this). The housekeeper ended up throwing it away because she thought it was trash, which seems a bit silly given it was a bag from Bottega Veneta with a brand new wallet inside. Mistakes happen though—long story short, don't count on a lost and found.