For adults visiting the Bay Area for fun this is not the place for you. I surprised my sister with a trip to Oakland/SF to celebrate her 52nd birthday. We hadn’t seen each other in 3 years and were excited for the weekend. 5 min after arriving I knew I had made a mistake choosing this “boutique garden getaway.” It is not that. It is more like a dungeon with wood floors. The place was freezing when we arrived and after looking around for a thermostat I messaged Bianca to ask where it was because we were so cold our fingers were numb. She directed me to a small gas fireplace and said it would warm up the room well but there’s a space heater in the closet if we needed. We did. I plugged in the heater and was met with a very loud clatter. So loud that we couldn’t comfortably converse so we chose to be cold and use blankets instead. The fireplace “MUST” be turned off at night so we stayed cold the entire time we were there.
That evening I put a request in for a change in my reservation asking if we could check out a day early. I would’ve requested sooner but we had nowhere to go. We were going to Napa the next day and no time to figure out an alternative. Bianca responded reminding me of her strict cancellation policy. I let her know that I understood the policy I agreed to but that I felt the apartment had been misrepresented. I explained that we didn’t feel welcome there. We felt like we had a landlord not a host. I told her that we are both in our 50’s and feel like teenagers with chores and a curfew. I let her know that we’re both mom’s and do a lot for our families but that there are so many “must” rules that we worked more there than at home referring to composting, etc. I was also disappointed that, based on the rules listed, I couldn’t have a candle on my sister’s birthday cake. Bianca’s response was to say, “of course you can have birthday candles” but, as I said, there was no way for me to know that based on the seriousness of her rules. Bianca took my comment about the apartment being misrepresented to mean that I was complaining about the noise her child made. I wasn’t and didn’t. I never once mentioned her child practicing Mary Had A Little Lamb on the piano or the noise of kids running around above our head. I never mentioned it because I knew there would be kids living there. But since I’m on that topic we kept our end of the bargain and were sure to be quiet at 10:00p but both nights we were woken up by noise upstairs, first night at 11:15p, next night it was after 11:30p. I ended up cutting my losses and going to a hotel our last night in hopes of salvaging our vacation and relaxing. We gathered our garbage and left.
I’ve stayed at many AirBnb’s and have loved every other experience aside from this one. I’ve only stayed in super host places but this is not up to the standards of a super host. I ignored the negative reviews even though Bianca’s snarky responses indicated how she handles issues with her “guests” (tenants). I wish I would’ve followed my gut when I got bad vibes after reading those responses. When one guest commented about wasting food due to no microwave Bianca listed a bunch of reasons why there isn’t one but since she doesn’t live there, it would be nice to offer to traveling guests.
I could say more but this should give an idea of what a stay here would be like. I have no personal issues with Bianca. My motivation to write this review is only to give potential future guests a true account of my experience at her place. I fully expect a defensive response.
Lastly, if giving directions to SF is listed as an amenity but there’s no electric coffee maker, microwave, or heater I advise to run the other way and choose another place.