We traveled to New York last week for seven days and stayed at Ann’s house. Here is our experience:

Pros:
1)The house is centrally located. It’s a few minutes walk to two different subway stations with multiple lines.
2) The neighborhood is fantastic for food, coffee and shopping.
3)Ann provided a discount for a weeklong stay and our willingness to take a good care of her two cats.
4)There were four of us. It’s nice to stay in a house feeling as if we were at home.

Cons:
1)The main bedroom had a faint smell of cat’s pee.
2)There are twos bars adjacent and across from the house. Unfortunately, you can hear people clearly to the wee hours of the morning if you stay in Red Room or Library.
3)Ann has a lot of stuff everywhere in the house. Quite cluttered. There’s no closet space to hang our clothes – we need to use standalone clothes hooks.
4) When we arrived Newark airport, I called and texted Ann multiple times but she didn’t answer. Eventually she responded to my text. We got to the house, and we had to wait for her for twenty minutes.

Ann told us that a maid would be there at 12 noon to clean the house the day we left, so we left five or six used glasses in the kitchen. The next day I received a message from Ann complaining that it was very unpleasant for her to put them into the dishwasher.

We also had a few faux pas during the stay. One garbage day we put our bag in front of the wrong side of the house – the side of Ann’s neighbor’s. We didn’t sort our recycles properly. We also didn’t turn off the coffee machine properly that Ann had to reset it to make it work. A lesson learned is that we need to be more careful for future stays.