Good hosts but the place had major dealbreakers. Please read completely. This place had what we needed and more—the bed was comfortable and the property felt safe.
The extras were very nice: stocked fridge and bathroom amenities, et cetera.
The location was convenient for walking around our favorite parts of Long Beach.
The kitchen was small but well-appointed if you wanted to eat-in rather than dine out.
Now, the dealbreaker part. Bear in mind that we are only writing this to be completely transparent, objective, and informative. We wrestled with how to approach this review, but ultimately felt like withholding this information would be a disservice to other guests, so here goes:
We quickly noticed that there were a lot of ants in the kitchen area. The hosts had left us some nice snacks upon check-in, and they were swarmed with ants. We acted quickly to get any food out of the house or into the fridge if they weren’t yet ant-ridden. Unfortunately the ant problem persisted. Gross, but we figured we could live with it as long as we didn’t use the kitchen. A few days went by, and we noticed we were getting big bites on our feet and ankles. We figured this was mosquitos because we had seen some out on the patio. However I paid closer attention when I felt the bites while we were within the house. When I looked closely, I noticed something that made us pack up and leave immediately: these bites were not from mosquitos but *fleas*. They were hopping onto our ankles and eating us up. It still makes my skin crawl thinking about it. As soon as I positively identified the insects as fleas, we were out of there. Thankfully, we did not find any bites on our little one who was sleeping in the pack-and-play (close to floor level).
The hosts were very apologetic and immediately refunded us for the days that we did not stay, since we checked out early, which we felt was fair. The place is listed as pet-friendly, so this is something I will watch out for in future bookings (we don’t have any pets). I want to emphasize that we feel like we were refunded fairly and we are not trying to steer people away. These problems are easily rectified with a pest-control service, so I imagine the hosts will take care of that.
Another minor issue was the lack of air conditioning. This is mentioned in the listing, but we figured it would still be comfortable given the nice climate in LB. The place has an oscillating fan and a funny little “arctic air pure chill” thing (you can find it on Amazon) that is basically a fan with a water evaporator. I think it would help if you were right in front of it, but it doesn’t cool the room down much. We even soaked the filter in water and stored it in the freezer as the directions suggest for optimal performance. Like I mentioned, we knew the place didn’t have A/C, but I’m mentioning it here because I think it would help mitigate the humidity and the need to leave the windows open all the time, thereby barring access to some of the bugs.