IN BRIEF: Simo´s apartment is nice and comfortable and corresponds to the pictures of his ad, with a good location next to a subway station with many markets nearby. Unfortunately the host did not appear to have devoted the necessary time and care to properly prepare the apartment for guests, and we definitely encourage him to address this point at his next rental (not all guests are patient and understanding as we have been during this stay). IN DETAIL: The bedding and towels provided were clean, but not the apartment as a whole so we had to clean it ourselves. Upon our arrival we were overcome by a strong and unpleasant odor we later discovered to be 3 plug-in air fresheners that overwhelmed the small apartment with poor air circulation. Bathroom: only sink and toilet had been cleaned. The shower had a dirty washcloth and a used towel hanging from it. The tub appeared to have been rinsed out instead of thoroughly washed. A funky odor was due to mildew in the tiles and around the toilet base, dirty floor mats. There was no place for our toiletries as every available surface was taken by the host’s personal items, including the couple of hooks behind the door where his used bathrobe hung. Living Area: All 3 tables in this room were covered in dust. Bedroom: the bed side tables and frame were dust covered. The curtains smelled of smoke. The desk was unusable and crammed with items. No space was made in any of the three closets in the apartment for us to hang our clothes and there were no coat hooks anywhere in the apartment. Kitchen: a tiny galley with limited counter space. The toaster oven was so full of grime and grease that we were not able to use it from a hygienic/fire hazard perspective. All the cabinets were filled to capacity with no space for our groceries. The cleaning instruments were inadequate; kitchen sponge smelly and falling apart; a broom with no dust pan, a sponge mop with a completely worn out head, a Swiffer type mop without accompanying cloths and therefore useless for mopping, a carpet broom missing 1/2 of its handle. Amenities: only after having made the reservation we were informed that contrary to what advertised there was no cable TV; but we were told there was “a DVD player with a lot of great movies”. However the DVD player had been left disconnected to the TV, taking some 3 hours of our hard work through the clutter of cables to fix the problem. It then turned out that the TV too was defective..., showing a variety of vertical stripes in the screen, turning the vision of those great movies into a torture... Indeed we gave up and decided to forget about watching TV for the 5 days of our stay! Communications with the host: weren’t always easy, and he in some occasions he did not appear to display an abundance of courtesy (sometimes overreacting).