When I made my reservation at Jamie’s place, he contacted us via Airbnb shortly after with the details and welcomed us. This was highly appreciated since it gave us a kind of trust in the host. He asked us what our ETA would be and told us he would join an event on Friday evening (the moment we would arrive) so he couldn’t be there for giving us the keys and asked us to come earlier or later. This was not an option since we were travelling with car (& ferry), so he suggested to drop the keys off at a local shop nearby where we could pick them up. I didn’t think this was very professional to do, since he is the host and he was joining an event at the time of arrival, but we didn’t make it any issue and agreed.
Unfortunately we had big delays with the ferry and because of the bad weather conditions we weren’t able to give Jamie our new ETA but we were sure it would be somewhere in the middle of the night. Very annoying for both parties… Jamie told us he could not let us in at that time because he would be asleep and we could look for a hostel instead to sleep a couple of hours and that we could checkin at the Airbnb around 9am.
Arriving at 9am at the Airbnb, it was clear that Jamie was living in the same apartment so it was a bit of a shock for us since he didn’t want to let us in in the middle of the night if it was only to go downstairs for a couple of minutes and back to bed. Also we didn’t want to make it an issue because it wouldn’t make any difference anyway and we wanted to enjoy our trip to London.
The location of the apartment is very good and nice when you are travelling by car. The free parking space (which is closed by a gate) is a real asset! Also the walking distance to the closest Metro station is very convenient to discover London.
The Airbnb itself consisted of a sleeping room and a shared bathroom with Jamie and his girlfriend. A lot of their personal belongings where still there, which was a bit weird. There were clean bedsheets and towels foreseen for us to use. The bathroom itself was old and with mold spots…
Going to bed Jamie had visitors at the apartment hanging out, but they were not too loud, so we had a good night rest. At checkout, everyone was still sleeping so we let ourselves out and brought the keys back to the apartment.
In short: nice location for a reasonable price to visit London for a short stay, but not sure if we would make a second reservation.