We had a frustrating time at this apartment. The place has potential, and is in a convenient location. But I would hesitate to recommend this place to anyone, and certainly would not during summer.
To start with, the listing was inaccurate; it listed that there was central air conditioning, but in fact there wasn’t air conditioning of any kind available. After dragging our suitcases up the hill from Waverley train station in the middle of June, this was a severe disappointment as it was hot and stuffy in the apartment with no A/C, no fans of any kind, and old windows that were a struggle to open.
To make matters worse, the host was inattentive and frankly blasé when we started asking questions. A response of, essentially, “yeah the listing is wrong, and sometimes it gets a bit warm but just crack a window”, no one within hundreds of miles to help solve the issue, and an offer to reimburse us for any fans we purchased that night after 9 PM when no stores were open were all quite disappointing to hear and not satisfactory. We reported the innacurate listing issue to Airbnb customer service and received a partial refund, but nevertheless this was a frustrating start to our stay.
Other issues we encountered:
-because of the lack of AC and old creaky windows that were difficult to open and felt like they might break at a moments notice, it was necessary to leave the windows open throughout our stay. This let in a lot of noise from the various bars on the street below at night, and raucous cries from crowds of seagulls around 5 AM at sunrise. Definitely not ideal.
-The apartment was brightly lit at sunrise, which in the summer is around 4:30 AM. It was therefore very difficult to sleep after 6 AM. Blackout curtains would be a huge help on this front, but none were to be had.
-There was no hot water in any of the sinks, but there was hot water from in-line heaters in the showers.
-The upstairs shower is quite small, was dirty, and was in disrepair (the piece holding the shower nozzle on was half broken)
-As others have noted, the furniture doesn’t quite fit in the space; it’s essentially impossible to navigate the living room when the table is open, for example, and the loft bedroom has very minimal space around the bed which anyone staying upstairs will have to navigate. In all of the bedrooms it was difficult to access the outlets to charge devices, and we ended up charging many things in the kitchen instead.
-There are very limited provisions in the kitchen. We had to buy sugar in bulk for tea, there was no salt and pepper, etc.
Positives:
Location was good and easy access to Royal Mile, which was very nice
Beds were comfortable
TV was nice and had access to most streaming apps
Overall, if you had a group of 2-3 people, this may be an acceptable option as long as you accept the problems above. But there are likely better options for a group that small, and this is especially true in summer.