Amazingly convenient, comfortable, clean, easy place to stay. It was our first time with airbnb, and I was a little apprehensive. Would it be safe? No worries there. Iulia is a lovely, friendly, relaxed person with a safe, clean, well-locked apartment in a safe family building in a safe neighborhood. I was there with my teenage daughter and felt comfortable and secure the whole time. I was also worried about whether Iulia would be a "mother hen," intruding upon our privacy or wanting to be too chummy. Again, no worries. She obviously understood that different people will want different amounts of contact, and she let us determine it. If we wanted, we could barely have seen her or spoken to her at all. As it happened, she was so much fun to talk with, and had so many good suggestions, that we DID wind up getting to know her, but it was clearly at our option. She never knocked on our door or acted like we owed her conversation. I never even saw her in our little hallway or bathroom.

Another concern I had was whether we could control the temperature. I like it cool at night. As it turned out we had a nice new air conditioner that cooled the room perfectly. There's also a big screened window we could open instead, which we did on cool nights, and it's safe because it's on the 4th floor. You can see the NY skyline out the window.

One of the coolest things was the location. We had initially wanted a place in Manhattan. Hotels were ridiculously priced for tiny, moldy, cramped rooms. What we found with Iulia's was that it was every bit as convenient as Manhattan, due to the fact that it's only three blocks from the subway, and the line is a direct route to Times Square that only takes about 10 minutes. You can literally leave home and be in Times Square in 15 minutes, changing trains to all over the city from there.

If you are a stickler for the empty surfaces and minimalism of hotel life, you would be better in a hotel. Here, Iulia's bookshelves are full of interesting books, and there are DVD's and personal possessions and decorations. It can't be mentioned enough, though, that the place was immaculately clean. In the bathroom are a wide range of lovely soaps, shampoos and other nice quality products you can use. She supplies a lot of conveniences that save money on the little things: coffee, tea, hot chocolate, crackers, candies, sewing kit to name but a few of the things we used. Plenty of space in the fridge, ice made from filtered water.

The bed is a wonderful tempurpedic with a big selection of comfy pillows of different sizes, including tempurpedic ones, and high quality fresh, clean linens.

In summary, we loved staying here and will refer all our friends! Thank you, Iulia for a wonderful week!