Nice, comfy apartment and incredibly gracious & wonderful host. Just a few things to be aware of.
Pros:
- GREAT location — 8 min. walk to the metro station. On a main street so super safe to walk to and from the metro station, even late at night. We were three women and at times, came back at late-ish hours (10 - 11 pm). Safe, busy street with a lot of mini-marts that are open till late at night. On the 4th floor so no noise from the busy street.
- Looots of markets, restaurants, and cafes around, which is always a plus.
- Sparkling clean apartment.
- Very communicative host with fast responses. She’ll help you out with anything if you have any issues whatsoever.
Cons:
- Bring your earplugs with you. Nextdoor neighbor watches veeeeery LOUD TV till 3-3.30 am at night (maybe an elder who’s hard of hearing, I don’t know…) and the walls are super thin. HOWEVER, this issue was resolved right away when we could not sleep on our first night and I got in contact with Jasmine the next day — she communicated with the neighbor and it got better.
Also, there’s a mosque right next door, so if you’re a light sleeper like me, you’ll need earplugs or you might wake up every early morning with the prayer call (usually somewhere between 5 - 6.30 am, depending on the time of year).
- The water heater falls short for 3 people. Whenever we all took a shower, one after the other, the last person to go never had enough hot water. This was the case even though our host told us it would be enough if we waited at least 15 min. between showers — did not work. If you’re just 1 person or 2 people, you’d probably be fine.
All in all, we were happy with our stay and enjoyed the apartment and the neighborhood. Location really makes a big difference — being close to a metro station that we can walk to easily (no slope) was important to us.