Oh dear! You almost don't know where to start. So from the beginning. Cami appeared to be a very good and attentive host - and I am sure she is - though it started to wear a little thin prior to arrival when her house rules were stressed and repeated at least three times and probably more. I was also unimpressed by the "oh, by the way" message the day before we arrived to say that we would be filmed entering and leaving the apartment by webcam - presumably to make sure we adhered to the rules (no guests, no shoes, no noise). A bad taste was starting to form.
The first hiccup - and for this I don't blame Cami, though she proved hard to get hold of - was that the keys were not in the key cafe as promised (I assume the previous guest hadn't returned them - possibly as a gesture). It took a good hour to get it sorted out but comms were a little stressful.
The first impression of the building is pretty appalling. Granted, there is a lovely buzzing cafe neighbourhood just around the corner, but the building itself and those immediately around it take you right back to the tenement area. It is an understatement to call it run down. Filth, graffiti and even a hole in the front door; and the common parts were beyond horrible and dirty. On more than one occasion, we entered or left the building to find some random sitting on the steps to the front door completely off their skull and feeling slightly threatening.
So on into the apartment. The first impression was the noise assault on the ears........ from the fridge which was growling like a dinosaur. The two bedrooms were much as expected, as was the sofabed in the tiny living room, though it was a side-to-side fold down - very uncomfortable - rather than a pull out with a proper mattress. I had requested that it be made up, but it wasn't and we had to search for linen of which there wasn't much.
However, the worst thing about the apartment was the kitchen and bathroom facilities which were verging - in my humble opinion - on the illegal. Certainly in my home country of England, they would have been against every law on the statute book. The "kitchen" was in a tiny nook with stove and sink with the growling dinosaur of a fridge (which, every so often, shut itself down with a howling shudder of death that would have closed down a disco for noise) in the living room. Dividing said "kitchen" (I think the description said something about preparing a gourmet meal - not on your life!) from the toilet and minute shower was a flimsy concertina folding plastic door that met neither ceiling nor floor and didn't close - much less lock. It offered no privacy whatsoever but, worse, the toilet was sitting exactly next to the cooker.
I had told Cami in my introduction that we were three separate adults - two women (myself included) in their fifties and my adult son. I think it would have been honourable and the right thing to do for her to have let me know that the apartment was completely unsuitable for this arrangement and that I would be better off finding something else. The bathroom was embarrassing to use for all of us and I know that we all felt the need to find a restaurant for the more serious needs of evacuation, as the privacy to exercise these in the apartment was non-existent.
Oh, and did I mention there was no hot water?
As it was impossible my son to sleep on the sofa bed (pretty impossible anyway due to the discomfort of the thing) next to the roaring fridge, we resorted to unplugging it. So no fridge for the duration; sanity of no horrendous noise being more necessary than milk.
In short this was a thoroughly unpleasant place to stay and thank heavens it was only for two nights. It was with a huge sense of relief that we said goodbye and - having never written a bad Air BNB review in my life before - I can only advise Cami that she needs to have a major rethink. And buy a new fridge!
If I try to end on a bit of positivity, the beds in the two bedrooms were reasonably comfortable and the linen had a nice high threadcount. The towels were fairly new and a decent size. I can just about see, at a push, that this apartment might suit a couple with young kids where the bathroom would be less of an issue (though the toilet would still be jammed up against the cooker) but that is about as far as I can go.