PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE BOOKING....YOU'LL BE GLAD YOU DID.
Where to begin. Before I booked this place, I read every word of every review written. The one thing they all agreed on was the location. I will say, this part of London is very nice although it is exceptionally pricey. Now, I have nothing to say about the host (Gary) since we never met or spoke. After a text through Airbnb, he told us to communicate with him through Whatsapp. His friend Michael met us at Heathrow and gave us the keys to the flat and we were off on our much awaited adventure. The photos in the listing are very representative of the place but until you get there, you never know. I knew immediately after opening the door to the building that I had made a mistake. Turns out, the flat is a third floor walk up with 32 narrow stairs. We are in the UK for a month and had quite a bit of luggage. By the time I got our stuff up to the flat, I had thrown out my back to the point where just walking was difficult and forget about standing upright. After two visits to a chiropractor and one to an acupuncture specialist, I can finally walk upright and I'm out $300 and I can finally start enjoying London. Now, I will say that after dealing with a wonderful lady at Airbnb (Maria), they did come through and reimbursed me for the medical expenses. This is just another reason I will always book through Airbnb. My main reason for contacting Airbnb was not to ask for money. It was to let them know that the listing at the time I booked the place was horribly misleading and very inaccurate. The host has since corrected some of it but not all. Obviously, my first concern was the stairs and that there was no mention of it in the listing. If I had known it was a third floor walkup, at my age, I would have booked elsewhere. Under "Where You'll Sleep", there was a picture of a queen bed in the bedroom, which he listed as a king but who cares about that, right? A lot of the reviews complained about his very expensive John Lewis bed and they were right. I don't care what he paid for it, it is way too soft and if you are sleeping on the left side, you have a matter of about 10 inches to get into the bed. It is way to close to the closet. Even that didn't bother us. However, he also shows a picture of the living room which shows a table and a few chairs and a sofa. I assumed the sofa was a sofa bed since he had listed a queen bed in the living room along with a cot. The sofa is simply a sofa and there is no cot. Again, just an outright lie. He also listed a hot tub (which he has since removed). There is no hot tub unless he was referring to the bathtub, which does have hot water. And then there is the dryer, which he has also removed. He listed a dryer next to an icon of a dryer and what we got was a drying rack. There is no dryer. If you book this place, you will also discover the upstairs neighbors (lovely people) walk around a lot at night and you will swear someone is in the unit with you. They woke us up frequently and one night my wife freaked because she was convinced someone was in there with us. In general, the place is fine and pretty basic. It is stocked with plenty of stuff but the entire unit (especially the bathroom) is in desperate need of a major upgrade. The unit is very mediocre and we could not wait to get out of there. Now, I expect the host will respond to my review and not in a nice way. But, I swear on the lives of my children that every word of this review is true. Again, I have reported all of this to Airbnb and I trust they will do something to rectify this listing. I took a lot of videos of the place just in case. If you don't mind the stairs and the run down feel to the unit, by all means, book away. Oh, and forget plugging in anything requiring more power than a mobile phone. The electric there is as bad as everything else. And, if you want to watch TV in bed, there is a lovely samsung unit on the wall which gets no signal and is therefore useless. Despite the flat, we had a wonderful time. London is fantastic.