2 stars for Mould and Rats🐀
We would not stay here again. My partner and I booked this place for 6 days at a very high price, thinking it’s worth a nice place in Kensington for a relaxed week. It wasn’t. While the host was relatively easy ti reach and polite there are a lot of issues with this place, that made us almost leave after the first night. Upon entering the flat you are greeted by a warm, moist and sweet stench owed for the mouldy, tiny bathroom. The ventilation does not work in there, and the bathroom is so small that the moisture gets everywhere, the shower rug is constantly wet and smelly for example. The shower wall is covered in mould, the curtain has long started to rot at the bottom, it’s literally turned brown and yellow from the original white and is literally hanging by a metal thread from a little screw in the very low ceiling. We dreaded every shower in there (my partner ended up instead showering at their office not far from the flat).
Now, while the open surfaces in the flat were indeed very clean, the dishes and cupboards were not. There was a dirty cleaning cloth left out in the bathroom and loads of dirt collecting in the cupboard above the sink and in the lower cupboards in the kitchen, making it look like it’s never been cleaned beyond the visible surfaces.
The bed is broken, so it isn’t even, meaning my partner slept in a whole or rolled out the bed at night or we shared one half of the bed, neither option was comfortable.
The windows have not been cleaned in years by the looks of the elaborate spider webs and stains all over them. Due to the moist, mouldy air they also are stuck closed and take actual effort to press open to finally get some fresh air in.
Finally over to the rats- the first night we made our peace with the mouldy air and went to sleep only to be kept up by loud screaching and scratching in the ceiling and the sound of multiple animals running around. At first we thought it the dogs of the people in the flat above. But during the night we heard them move around the walls behind the bed and heard squeaking that definitely belong to rats- too heavy sounds running around and too loud to be mice. A couple times the rummaging of the rats was so loud it sounded like they were about ti break through the wall, you could hear them fight and chew at stuff. It was disgusting.
We only stayed for the rest of the week because we had paid a lot of money and affording a hotel at the moment is ridiculously expensive especially on short notice. We stayed outside the flat as much as possible only really coming back to sleep there. We were forced to do home office in cafes in the area which wasn’t ideal as we both have jobs with plenty meetings during the day but staying in that mouldy air wasn’t an option.