My partner and I moved to Edinburgh in early June, and spent the first few weeks apartment and job hunting, thankfully sorting both relatively quickly. Our move in date was unfortunately 9 days after our short term accommodation ran out. So we needed to secure accommodation as quickly and cheaply as we could for the intervening days, as we would both be beginning new jobs from the start of those 9 days.
When we found Els' place we were delighted, it was very near our new apartment so our commute wouldn't be affected by the midweek move, it looked very nice and was priced very reasonably. We are both pretty active Airbnb users and are used to the prospect of staying with our hosts so we didn't mind living with the owner.
Els apartment is excellently located, very neat and tidy and reasonably priced, particularly as it includes a daily breakfast which was of good quality. However , I feel it would be unfair to future prospective guests not to mention some particularly unpleasant aspects of our stay that we wish we had known about going in.
Els keeps a very tidy house, so much so that I believe it should be more expressly stated in her description and house rules the high level of cleanliness she expects from her guests. This is not to say that it's unfair to ask guests to clean up after themselves, but Els had such exacting standards that we quickly felt uncomfortable doing anything in the apartment. She could also be somewhat condescending in her correspondence with us on these issues.
It seemed to us that our staying with Els made her uncomfortable. After returning from a night away at one point Els accused us of smoking in the apartment, and leaving cigarette butts on the patio outside and in the inside bin. When Els was in our room she noticed that I had rolling tobacco in my room ( which she placed into a plastic bag while I was away), however neither myself nor my partner had any cigarettes while staying with Els ( I'm a very intermittent, social smoker.and she does not smoke). I can accept that Els found cigarette butts in her back garden, as there are at least 3 floors of apartments above that looked onto it, but I have no idea how she could have claimed to have found cigarette butts in the rubbish. When I expressed this to her over text , she was very defensive, and made my partner and I feel very uncomfortable. When we spoke to her about it in person, she presented no evidence and dropped the claim right away.
This kind of exchange seemed to be the norm with Els, another time texting us asking us to explain how the electricity got fused in the apartment. I told Els that it was all working fine when I left for work, as was it when my partner left about twenty minutes after me. In her reply Els again expressed disbelief, calling it an ''interesting explanation''. This kind of response may not seem like a big deal, but when this is somewhere that you're paying to stay, it's extremely frustrating, not to mention strange.
I don't mean for this to be a personal attack on Els, although I suppose in this relationship it's hard for it to be any other way. She is an exuberant, interesting person, and I enjoyed talking with her. As I've said the accommodation is of a good standard, and in a convenient location for a great price. However I feel that if you were to stay with Els you should be prepared to accept her high standards. I can understand the importance of proper recycling technique, not wearing shoes in-doors and knowing when and how the electricity gets fused. Her demeanor in dealing with us however, meant that our week with Els was particularly uncomfortable, sometimes stressful. We felt anxious heading back on evenings we knew she'd be there and upset by the tone of her messages, which was incredibly frustrating as we were after all paying guests.
I can see that Els has updated her rules to reflect the living situation a bit more accurately, however I do feel that her expectations should be stated a bit more clearly in her profile as they characterize staying with her so much. I have no idea what Els' overall opinion of us and our stay with her was, and I obviously can't claim to paint a broad picture of her personality ; perhaps our personalities just clashed. I just do think it's important to articulate the discomfort of my experience in this accommodation.