Excellent location, right at the entrance to the old town. Terrace is very nice but it was very hot during our one-week stay so we didn’t get to enjoy it as much as we would’ve liked. Cristina was there to receive us and was excellent at responding to our messages. The apartment is very nice, however this is the host’s private residence and though I was aware of having stayed at other people’s homes before, this is the first time we were uncomfortable with that as she kept reiterating throughout our communications that this was her home and she had never had any problems.
The electricity went out on our first night and I messaged her about it. Cristina told us she was staying an hour away from Valencia and to reset the breakers...thank goodness that worked because we didn’t want her driving an hour the next day to see what the problem was. This happened the first three days and the last three days of our Sunday through the following Monday stay. Again we were told she had never, ever, had this kind of trouble in her home. After we’d left, she sent a message letting us know she figured out that if you use the oven when the air conditioning is on, there isn’t enough juice to power both and the breakers will trip. She said she doesn’t use the A/C so she had never experienced the issue.
This is also the first time we’ve experienced uncleanliness to the extent we did here. The refrigerator was not clean, it had dried up spills on the glass shelves, the oven had not been cleaned either, it had crusty residue stuck on the tray which I had to clean as it was charred and it smoked up the oven when we turned it on.
The kitchen sink was clogged. I advised Cristina of the issue with the sink as we didn’t want to be blamed for the existing problem, and she said it must have been the previous guests; however I really don’t know how you can clean up the kitchen after previous guests left and not realize the sink is not draining. She offered to come pour chemicals down the drain to unclog it, however I am sensitive to chemical odors so I said we would let it be as we don’t do meal preparation anyway, we just warm up take out, and I didn’t want her driving an hour to Valencia.
The two frying pans in the kitchen were peeling and should have been replaced many moons ago, again we’ve never seen such in places we’ve stayed before.
The towels we were provided smelled bad and when we went to wash them in the clothes washer in the apartment, the drawer for the detergent and fabric softener was covered in black mold which was truly upsetting because for mold to build up like that it takes a long time and it is a health hazard. I took a picture of it, too bad you can’t include pictures with your review. When we got there the host had a set of towels drying on the rack and we had thought to use those instead of the smelly ones until we saw the mold. Luckily there’s a laundromat around the corner.
Also on our first night there, my husband killed a big cockroach (about two inches long).
There’s no shower mat in the bathtub, so you have to be careful not to slip.
There’s only one air conditioning unit, located on the dining area wall, and it doesn’t do much for the bedroom when temperatures are in the high 90s, low 100s...no fan either and we weren’t about to ask so we just sweated it out when we went to sleep.
Unfortunately, we did have to ask Cristina to come help after the TV started acting up...we can do without a lot of things but TV is not one of them, and we didn’t want to tinker with it because we don’t want the responsibility. It turned out to be the remote but there were no batteries in the apartment anyway.
Though the picture on the listing shows throw pillows on the couch they must be for personal use, because they were not there for us...we ended up asking Cristina if she had cushions for the sofa and we could tell she wasn’t pleased that we had asked, but she provided two extra pillows.
We are not needy guests, and we try not to bother our hosts. Valencia was our 15th Airbnb, and we never had to message a host as much as during this stay.
I try to be honest in my Airbnb reviews. So many people in the Airbnb community seem to just say everything is perfect and if things are perfect, I say so...but if they are not, I want to make others aware so they make informed decisions.
Again, the apartment is nice and the location is great.