Dorina was great (at first). She was proactive about our reservation, let us check in early, the place was clean, with some breakfast foods and coffee unexpectedly available. We had a red eye flight, so getting in early allowed us to nap and get ready for our first day. She laid out detailed notes for transit (a bit of a mess in NYC at the moment of writing) and the rules of the house. Made many useful recommendations about the neighbourhood. All a really good start. Everything was as expected, except the final night.
The walls/floors in the entire house are thin, so you hear the floor above a lot. Noise carries here, something I didn't see any other review mention. There were ear plugs and night masks if it was really bothersome, we travel with a white noise machine so that helped us but not the other couple with us. Despite that, it was all going great until our last night.
A strict no party, no noise, etc... policy to be expected in most AirBnB's we've stayed in. Except it ended up being incredibly hypocritical. She hosted a very loud party in the backyard the last night we were there until at least 2AM. They did take it upstairs by about 1AM at least. The two bedrooms face the backyard, and a loud speaker was only a few feet from our friends heads as they tried to sleep. Not cool. They had an early flight the next day and needed to be up early. I was willing to give the benefit of a doubt that it's a Saturday night and in most places in the world 11PM is when things should normally get shut down or taken inside. When the noise continued I sent messages, we opened the window and tried to signal to turn the music down, all to no avail. We were rudely ignored. I even contacted AirBnB directly on what to do, and as it turns out, not much unless we want to leave at the last minute. It's her place, what are we really going to do?
I received a message from her the following day apologizing for the noise and an explanation that the party had been planned for some time before our arrival. Fine, I'd say don't rent the place out that night then. Even a bit of a heads up about the party would have been better than simply ignoring us, after all we're paying for use of the space. We booked some time in advance and could have easily moved that evening and stayed elsewhere preserving our otherwise good experience. Perhaps on isolated incident on an otherwise well reviewed place but everyone in our party was incredibly annoyed (obviously), more so at being ignored than anything else and the lack of communication. An otherwise good experience ended on a very sour note. We won't be back.