When we arrived at Emily's first-floor apartment in Bernal Heights, it was about 3:35pm, 35 minutes after we were allowed to check in, and the cleaners were still there. They greeted us with a mixture of surprise/confusion and said we could come in if we wanted to, but, since they seemed far from done and we didn't want to get in their way, we sat in our car on the street for another twenty minutes. After the cleaners had left, we approached the apartment for a second time and were immediately put off by the fact that the front door had been left wide open and that the key was not where Emily had told us to look. We tried to contact Emily through the Airbnb app, but she was non-responsive for a while, so we sat outside of the apartment waiting. She finally called and told us the cleaners must have left the key in the cast-iron gate that typically sat in front of the apartment door but which was currently wide open (so we couldn't see the key). We then entered the apartment to find that the fumes left from the cleaners were nearly unbearable. I'm running low on word count so I'm just going to list some of the other highlights from the remainder of our two-day stay:

-There were moldy fruits and vegetables in bowls in the kitchen
-There was curdled milk in the fridge
-The mildew/mold from the apartment gave my boyfriend a pretty bad allergy attack

Aside from all of this, the neighborhood of Bernal Heights was very cute.

Honestly, I know that we may sound like difficult guests, but in truth the experience here was just not ideal.