The listing looked promising on the AirBnB website, fantastic location and great for what we needed. Upon arrival check in was easy enough, but things started to go wrong as soon as we got to the room. The first thing was that the room smelled strongly of smoke despite the listing being a non-smoking residence. We opened the window to try and get rid of the smell only to find that the blind was broken and had been propped up on the window; we had to either hold it open with coat hangers or on its own broken pulley. It was also stiflingly hot, so we tried the fan that was supplied with the room; this was so clogged with dirt that it didn’t even move.
We started looking around a bit more and found that it was pretty dirty with thick almost builders dust everywhere. There was also sharp metal points sticking out of the bannisters at the top of the ladder to the bedroom area, which you have to be very careful not to catch your hand on. The bed itself is just a mattress on the floor and you can barely sit up comfortably without hitting your head on the ceiling. The mattress is very hard and old, with a dip in the middle.
We had bought some food for the morning and wanted to put it in fridge, but this was so frozen at the back that it couldn’t keep anything cold.
The tv is at such a strange angle that you can’t really watch it from either the bed or the uncomfortable sofa.
We tried the shower in the morning. The shower itself is powerful (though, again, very unclean as we found a hair in the shower pan), but the doors don’t close properly so you end up with water all over the floor. The bulb above the shower also doesn’t work.
The building has quite thin walls so you can hear everything that’s going on. Noisy neighbours coming back late at night, and cleaners bumping around at 7.30am.
Overall, the location is fantastic and the studio looks good on paper, but we would definitely not stay here again and would not be happy to pay nearly £100 for one night.