Our stay with David was our first time in Staten Island.
The location is perfect for exploring NYC and especially Staten Island.
It‘s a 20-25 minute walk or 5-10 minite bus ride to the Staten Island ferry which is free to ride to Manhattan. On our first day - also due to jet lag - we took the 6am ferry to Manhattan and watched the sunrise from the ferry. That alone was totally worth it.
Our communication with David was good and he was very detailed before our arrival. Since this was not our first time in NYC and we didn‘t have any issues during our stay there was no need to communicate during our stay. So I cannot say how his communication would have been during our stay.
Since the house is a historic building and David and his wife have children, we could hear the walking and sometimes children running around. However, that was only during the day and early evening. By the time we went to bed at night the whole house and neighborhood was almost too quiet.
The bed is huge and very soft - a bit too soft for us, but it was very comfy. The pillows were amazing and we usually had a good nights sleep.
We only had two points we were not 100% happy with:
There is next to no daylight in the apartment. I wrongly assumed due to the fact that there are windows in every room on the pictures that we would have at least a little bit of daylight. The only room with daylight is in fact the kitchen/dining area.
The apartment was not as clean as we would have liked, which gave the whole place a musty air. Due to the fact that itwas not possible to open the windows the smell only left the apartment partially when we used the air conditioning. However, the air conditioning units in the apartment are pretty good.
We enjoyed our time in Staten Island and would definitely recommend staying at David‘s place for the chance to explore the island and New York‘s beaches.