The good:
- Laurie has a lovely garden with beautiful produce that you can just pluck and eat, and the cottage has plenty of privacy.
- Laurie was a kind and communicative host.
- The bed is comfortable, and there was a change of sheets in the linen closet.
- The cottage may be small, but there are plenty of different spaces to be — the bed, the chair, the table, or outside — so it didn't feel too restrictive.
- The cottage is stocked with all the basics that you need.
- The area is really lovely to walk around in — not too far away there's an open area where you can get a 360 birds-eye view of all the neighboring cities. Super beautiful.
The less good:
- Spiders. Don't stay here if you are afraid of spiders, they're everywhere. One day I woke up and there was a dead spider on the pillow next to my head. I got the most painful spider bite I've ever had inside of this Airbnb.
- Distance. This Airbnb is far from everything. I recommend staying here if you have a car or lots of money to spend on Ubers, but don't count on walking to get you anywhere. The nearest store is like a 20-minute walk, and the nearest public transport is even farther.
- The kitchen. Laurie has a policy of guests washing and putting away all dishes before they check out, but many people are not very good at washing dishes. So when I showed up, all the dishes were (by my standards) not clean, and I had to wash them again. There are pots and pans and utensils, but they're not of very good quality, e.g. the spatula/rubber scraper was partially melted. The oven is small and terrifying. It works, but when it's on the outside of it gets so hot that you can't safely touch the dials, and if you, for example, leave a plastic colander on the stovetop, it'll melt.
- The first aid kit. I cut my finger and went for the first aid kit — it's there, but there weren't many normal-sized bandaids left, and the Neosporin expired in *2012*.
- The lighting. Every single light in the main room instantly gave me a migraine if turned on. I ended up turning on the light in the bathroom and leaving the door open, and buying a clip-on light for if I needed to see things up close. I still got a lot of migraines while here.
- There's an outdoor cat that lives in the garden right outside the cottage. It mostly left me alone, but it tried to come in one time when I left the door ajar, and another time it hissed at me. There's also a lot of scurrying around on the roof of the cottage in the night.
- Also be careful of the stairs down to Laurie's main gate, if you are carrying luggage. There's only a rail on one side, and when I was checking in, I was holding a suitcase and trying to get the gate open at the same time, and I overbalanced and fell into a bush.