Sue was an amazing host, and her house was lovely.

First off, we spotted this listing on AirBnB when we were planning our stay but stupidly kept looking, because we were looking for something closer to city center. Let us save you the trouble: there's no advantage to being closer to city center, because (a) East Austin is actually much more appealing (cf: SoCo), especially for a young / extended family such as ours, and (b) the bus lines pick up a block from this place. We actually used Uber almost exclusively (~$6 from downtown / 6th Ave) and found the drivers to be incredibly friendly and helpful, which is a crapshoot, of course, but I suspect says something about the good people of Austin. In short: there's no need to look elsewhere.

But we were late to discover this, so we made the rookie mistake of choosing a hotel - and, long story short, were not happy with what we got. We were left in the position of frantically searching for a better place at 6pm on a Friday. And not only was this place miraculously available, but Sue accommodated our request for an early check-in... in fact, she offered to let us come that very evening. We decided not to overstay our welcome before it began, but: bonus points for Sue.

When we did arrive the next day, Sue was already there, delivering groceries (including mac 'n' cheese for our toddler - not that we even asked) and gave us a detailed description of how to get around, drew us a map, and then followed up with a driving tour of the area. No lie. My wife, mother-in-law and I have traveled extensively and never had as warm service as this.

The place itself is also a joy. Colorful, playful, and inviting, this would be a great place to live and host parties, if it wasn't such a great place from which to visit the city. Our toddler loved eating in the rainbow-striped breakfast nook, and the living room was perfect for the one night the four of us crashed out and cooked dinner while watching movies. The beds were very comfortable and even the bathroom is spacious. The place was so well appointed that we took pictures (hope that's okay, Sue) just to give us design ideas for our new house.

tl;dr: You'd be a fool NOT to stay here.