This was a great spot to stay, and for the price it’s going to be really hard to beat. We were in Room 6, which shares a wall with the kitchen area.
This is essentially a more private hostel-type experience, where you have a private bedroom, but shared common areas, like kitchen, toilet, shower, rooftop, etc.
They clean the common areas daily, but it’s still shared, so if someone used the toilet or the shower before you, it’s not going to be perfect. That being said, it was usually pretty clean and my fiancé and I didn’t run into any of the other people staying in the other rooms. Nobody had conflicting shower schedules or anything. Perhaps we just got lucky, but I only saw one other couple in the upstairs at all, and they were on their way out the door. Other than that, the only way to know someone else was there was if there was music playing in the shower. (Shower & toilet are in separate bathrooms so you won’t have a problem going while someone is showering.)
The bedroom was very well insulated, so despite being upstairs from a restaurant and karaoke bar (the bar is open till at least 3am usually, and a great spot to go by the way) I didn’t have any trouble sleeping because I couldn’t hear anything outside of our room. In my experience, I’ve had issues with noise in hotels (thin walls) but not here! You’ll get a great rest and the bed is comfortable. They provided two down-alternative pillows and 2 memory foam pillows. Mattress was soft but firm enough to not sink into it. Lots of storage space in the room itself for luggage and things—a closet with shelves, a dresser, and chest of drawers mean you’ll have lots of space. The closet didn’t have a place to hang clothes on hangers, but there was an iron and ironing board available if you needed to press anything, which came in handy. We didn’t use the washer and dryer, but it’s very convenient that they were available.
Little Cons:
There is no window in the bedroom (at least not in Room 6). It is very dark when the door is closed and no lights are on, so if you need darkness to sleep, great! If you need natural light to wake up, it’ll be a little tough, so if you have a hard time waking up in darkness, you’ll have to come up with a solution for that. Perhaps they’ll put an alarm clock that has a sunrise alarm. Because there’s no window, I preferred not to hang out in the room during the day unless I was taking a nap, but that’s personal preference (my fiancé didn’t care about there not being a bedroom window, for example. It probably did help with the noise reduction not to have one).
Also, if you need to do remote work on a computer, just know there isn’t a desk, but the Wi-Fi is fine and the bed is comfortable enough to sit on (the headboard is padded so if you need to sit back, you can). I worked for about 4 hours after check-in and it was fine.
Big Pros:
The location is unbeatable. We were able to walk to Krewe de Boo (Halloween parade), walk to Bourbon, walk to Frenchman, and we didn’t even get to go to the other things right nearby that we planned to due to time constraints, but the jazz museum is right there too.
The hosts are EXTREMELY responsive. I messaged them at some odd times (I live in a different time zone) so I didn’t expect an immediate response from them, but I always got a very quick response. Even late at night when we had issues with our flights and I sent a panicked message, they directed us on how to properly navigate the situation!
Not to mention the restaurant (casa di Arabella, I think) literally downstairs had the best spaghetti and meatballs I’ve had in years and years, and they had the best garlic bread & bruschetta I’ve ever had, EVER. The karaoke bar next door is a lot of fun and attracts a good (local) crowd. The nearby bars and hole-in-the-wall food spots are also well worth a little look-see.
Plus, DJ, the assistant manager for the restaurant and for the bar next door was so much fun to chat with—we ended up seeing him all weekend because the bar was such a fun place to end the night! His sweet dog Lilo hangs out in the outdoor area sometimes and she’s a very good dog. We were missing our 3 dogs on this trip, so it was a pleasant surprise to have a sweet pup nearby!
The people who frequent these establishments also seem to be “the good kind” of folks—accepting, kind, funny, and extremely welcoming.
Even if you don’t stay here, I recommend going to the attached restaurant and bar, even just once. It’s well worth it!!!
The pros (value/low cost, great people, location is AMAZING) far outweigh the cons, in my opinion. It depends on what the purpose of your visit is, but here’s my take: if your main use for your booking is just to have a comfortable and safe place to sleep, shower, and get out the door in the morning, this is it.