I cannot recommend staying at this Airbnb. My stay at Maria’s was stressful, fraught, and anxiety-inducing most of the time. While the bed was comfortable, and the host generously invited me to share some food/drink with her on occasions, for the most part I found her overbearing, paranoid, unprofessional when dealing with Covid-19, and to have few of the boundaries I would expect from someone sharing their home.
She frequently came into the room I was staying in, sometimes when I wasn’t there. For me, this overstepped boundaries of privacy and respecting personal space. I found the lists of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’t’s’ excessive - finding lists on walls in every room, inside draws, the wardrobe, bathroom, and even outside the building before entering. Having hosted many guests in my home, I understand hosts can ask for rules to be respected, however, I wouldn’t expect the host to then break their own rules (by cooking after certain times such as at 10:30pm for example when her guests have a cooking curfew of 8pm). Others may find these rules no problem, but I found they affected my ability to feel relaxed here - I was tip-toeing around - cleaning/drying sinks and the entire shower room after use for example, opening windows for specific periods of time, and then being told not to do that by host who contradicted herself by telling me she found windows open after a shower and it was cold in the bathroom because of this - I let her know her notes clearly stated to do that.
If you are someone who likes continuity then this might not be the place for you. Things would frequently change in the house - the toilet roll and the toilet roll holder disappeared, plugs would suddenly be switched off at the walls, sponges and cloths were left in places so it would be necessary to move them to use the facilities. For me, this made the rule following tricky.
A most irritating and time consuming change was when the host kept thinking that her internet might be being hacked. No evidence was provided, but this led to the password, hub name and router being changed multiple times during my first week, significantly interrupting my ability to work from home and relax when I needed reliable and uninterrupted internet connection to do so.
Overall, I felt unwelcome and sensed the host doesn’t really want people there - a bucket of bleach was always in the bath ready to ‘wash away’ the person who had used the bathroom last. This left me feeling I was not really wanted here. Not to mention the dangers of having a bucket of bleach in the bath when getting in an out of the shower.
Unfortunately it was necessary for me to engage the help of Airbnb to intervene on a number of occasions, in particular to ask for the host to respect my personal space after I received messages from her telling me she would be in my room that evening.
I went to a friends at the weekends because it was so uncomfortable being there.
If you are concerned about Covid, I had to ask this host to do a covid test when she became ill with a cough. She told me she didn’t have any tests in the house. This was very concerning and stressful. I would have thought as a matter of safety this should be very important to any Airbnb host and to Airbnb. The host then left me waiting over 6 hours to let me know if she had covid or not. By which time I had found it necessary to find somewhere else to stay. I ended up cutting my stay short by 6 nights because it was so stressful staying there. The host would not refunding me for this.
I do not relish giving a ‘bad’ review, but these are my personal feelings, and I understand fully that others may not have this experience.