Carlos's property is extremely clean, bright, and tastefully appointed. The bed is comfortable and very high. Parking is a little tight but very manageable and much appreciated. The location is AMAZING. Close to everything you could want to see in San Diego, but still quiet and almost feels rural. The chateau felt like it held in humidity a decent bit, but the A/C was helpfully already installed when we arrived and was very effective at making the unit comfortable. There was also a fan available if needed, so no concerns there. All basic supplies were there as we needed. The shower is nice and strong - the bath curtain could maybe serve to be a couple inches longer, as the lip to the shower is very low, and the curtain needs to sit just right to seal it off. Only other potential note about the physical space would be that the bathroom faucet needs to run near full blast or else it spills water on the surrounding counter. Not a big deal.
All of the above would easily lead to a 5-star review - I would happily stay at the physical space again. That said, I had to dock a star because of an experience on the first night of our arrival. We checked in and quickly noticed that the Internet connection in the chateau was poor. We would connect with 1-2 of 3 "bars" showing on our phone, and the Internet would work for a couple minutes, then drop for a couple minutes, then come back and continue this cycle. It was easier to just turn it off then deal with the starting and stopping. Carlos had asked us to let him know if we had an issues, so when I confirmed we were good with checking in, I let him know we were having some issues with the WiFi, but that it was not a big deal for us (we were staying for pleasure so wouldn't use much data and had plenty on our phones for it not to matter). I mostly thought I was just doing a nice thing so he could get things straightened out for the future. Carlos responded that he was happy to reset the modem when he got home, which I agreed made sense, and he later was able to do so, but with minimal change in WiFi quality. At this time, Carlos made the generous offer to move us to a local hotel if we wished, to which we quickly responded that was definitely not necessary and that we just wanted to let him know about the WiFi - it wasn't important to us. About an hour went by and Carlos messaged me again, reiterating that he could put us up in a local hotel and noting that this had never happened before but he wanted us to have a positive experience. He also said he wasn't having WiFi issues at his house (next door) but wasn't sure what we were trying to do. I again declined this offer, noting that we much preferred staying where we were instead of going to a hotel and that the WiFi wasn't a big issue - all we were trying to do was connect our iPhones. I then immediately received another message, stating how he has rented this unit for years and never had a WiFi complaint. He said he has already offered to move us to another location and doesn't know what else to say. He reiterated that he was using the "same exact Wi-Fi" and that "it doesn't have any issues at all." At this point, I became very uncomfortable with the situation. The messages were, in my eyes, becoming very accusatory and dismissive (hesitant to post exact quotes here for privacy reasons, but the tone was clear). There seemed to be an assumption that we were either lying, incompetent, or otherwise trying to get something out of him, which we entirely were not. If someone was staying in a property of ours and something wasn't functional, I would want them to tell me regardless of whether it was a big or small deal to them, so I could have it fixed. That is all we thought we were doing. If Carlos thought we were mistaken and doing something wrong, he could have asked to walk the 20 feet from his home to test out the WiFi there for himself, but instead he jumped to being defensive and assuming that since it worked before, that must mean it can never break. I'd also note that 20 or so reviews back, there is another post about similar WiFi issues, so this does not appear to be a new issue. If this interaction had never happened, I would have given 5 stars regardless of the Internet's capabilities, because it wasn't important to us. But this conversation made me uncomfortable, and it made me unwilling to reach out to our host for any other reason, and I was desperately hoping not to run into him for an awkward interaction. It almost felt like Carlos was excited to ship us off to a hotel. My response to Carlos's message was to bluntly say we were not asking for him to do anything and we were happy as is, and to apologize for any confusion. We had no further interaction during my stay. The WiFi may have improved ever so slightly, but was still dropping frequently at the end of our stay. Take all of that for what it is worth. Everyone is entitled to a bad day and text conversations can easily be misconstrued, but I also think it is important to know how this host reacted in this situation for your own consideration. I regret that it happened because otherwise this was a property I would strongly recommend and hope to stay at again.