First of all, Barbara is an amazing host who is quite accommodating for her guests. I am not a very picky person and did not make many requests but even then, she still checked in with me to see if everything was alright. She gave me some tips on how to find things to do around Chicago which led me to join ultimate frisbee pickup games. As someone who is pretty introverted, I enjoyed my conversations with her as well.
A few things to note:
1. The room can get hot during the summer but this room has a ceiling fan for guests to use and you could open the windows at anytime. I had my own tower fan so I do not know how effective it is. Personally, the heat did not bother me too much and I was still able to sleep comfortably so it depends on how you handle high temperature weather.
2. The doors do not have locks. I have not found this to be a problem for me. I have had several people stay in the other room next door and none of them went into my room to snoop around.
3. A lot of people hang out in the streets during the day but as long as you mind your own business, you should be O.K. Other guests and myself have returned past midnight before with no problems.
4. The only minor issue I have with the condo is that the Wi-Fi can be unstable at times so I had to use more of my cellular data than usual. Perhaps it is better in the common area of the condo but I have not tested it. As of this review, Barbara is looking into how to fix this issue.
4. I met and conversed with a decent amount of people from other countries (Germany, Japan, New Zealand, etc.) who also decided to stay at Barbara's. It was an awesome opportunity to learn about life in other places around the world.
5. The Howard train station is a 3-5 minute walk from the condo so that's very convenient. Traveling to the Loop takes around 35-50 minutes and traveling to Northwestern takes about 20-30 minutes (including the walk from the Foster or Davis station to the university).
Overall, I enjoyed my stay in the small room and even though it was my first time in Chicago, Barbara gave me a comforting welcome to the city. 10/10 would stay again.