My wife has made her views known below this paragraph and I have a few additional comments regarding our experiences while visiting with our daughter and her family. When I made the reservations, I had the opportunity to see the accommodations online and read the description provided by the owner. I felt that it was just what we were looking for in the way of location and size of the unit to make our visit an enjoyable experience. There were, however, some rather disturbing surprises we had in store upon our arrival. The first surprise was that I was expecting to have a parking spot reserved for our rental car, since we were told we had a free parking spot. When we arrived, the only parking was on the street with all the other rowhouses’ parked vehicles, so we always had to search for a spot in which to park. The use of the owner’s lock boxes with his instructions for entering worked perfectly, and we were able to get the keys to enter the apartment. We hadn’t known beforehand (at least, not that I can remember) that the unit was on the third floor of the building. This meant that we had to carry two suitcases up two floors using a narrow set of stairs where the steps were approx. 10 to 12 inches deep. We had to be careful going up and down the stairs for fear of falling We are an active couple, in our seventies, but I would hate to see any of our less agile friends try to use the stairs to get to the apartment. I was particularly surprised that there were no instructions left for us to explain what the rules were staying in the apartment. I hadn’t known that there was wi-fi available until two days later when I was able to get in contact with Jason via the chat line AirBnB provides for us. Other surprises were no set of guest instructions for the electric stove top, the shower and trash disposal. The electric stove top might be standard in Manchester, but the controls are completely different than those we are used to in the US. I had no idea on how to turn on and off the burners. Eventually, close to the end of our stay, I managed to figure out how to use the electric burner. If only there were instructions left for us when we arrived, I could have been able to learn the proper steps to turn on the electric burner and avoid a high level of frustration I experienced. The shower was another learning experience, since when we used it, the water level rose in the shower base. Later I found that the drain had an insert which easily clogged up. When I removed the insert, there was never a subsequent problem with the shower water draining. The other issue was how to get rid of the accumulated trash. We searched the outside area to find if there was a place to dispose of trash we collected. The trash basket was small, so it required frequent emptying. There was a large garbage container at the bottom of the stairs, but it was full when we arrived and was never emptied during the length of our stay. There was one day that the trash containers were picked up by the city, but no one put the large container on the street to be emptied. On the whole, my wife and I were disappointed that our stay at the unit we rented wasn’t a better experience. If Jason was more responsive to our requests for help and if he wasn’t so dismissive and condescending in his response to our inquiries, I believe we would use his apartment on our future visits. The next visit to our daughter and her family, however, we will need to find another place, with hope that we won’t experience the same disappointment with the owner’s attitude and his responses for help.
We stayed in the apartment at 29 Lansdowne Rd. for 2 weeks. There were some good things and bad things about this apartment, such as the way it had been converted from an attic. It looked pleasant and had the few rooms that we required. The worst thing was the owner’s attitude. He was, for periods of time, unresponsive to our requests, and, when he finally answered us, he seemed to be sneering at us. For instance, he said that he had met the basic requirements of AirBnB for the apartment, and we should not expect the apartment to be as luxurious as we were used to at home. I don’t know what the basic requirements of AirBnB are, but we have stayed in AirBnB places all over the world, and we never had the problems we encountered at this place in Manchester. First of all, at first glance, the apartment was clean, but then we discovered that there were dust balls on the bedroom floor and trash left in the bathroom wastebasket. Also, I never heard of a kitchen without any plates, whatsoever. We asked and asked, and finally, towards the end of our stay, someone brought us two shallow soup bowls! (Jason wrote, however, after repeatedly insisting that there were two already in the kitchen, that he would have “two more plates sent over” -- as if we were lying about not having any. It would have been nice to have a few other things, like measuring cups and spoons and a colander. We also could have used some face towels and, possibly, some washcloths, as well as more than just two hangers, and, for the sake of convenience, a towel rack near the shower and a shelf or two, since the sink had no counter. A major thing would have been to have some instructions about: wi-fi (the password), how to operate the stove, and where to dispose of our trash when the wastebaskets were full.