Unfortunately our stay at Amanda's was quite unpleasant. Despite the house being very beautiful, we had little time to enjoy it due to poor cleaning, a lack of respect for privacy from the hosts, and an unwillingness from them to acknowledge these were not acceptable standards for hosting guests.
We arrived to find floors covered in dust, pet fur, and small bits of rubbish, benches not wiped, and a bad smell through the property. It was so dusty that my asthma flared up within minutes of being inside. The host had been at the house soon before our arrival, so should have been aware of these issues, but to her credit she sent a cleaner over to fix things. As the house is very large however, the cleaning took over two hours to complete, meaning we were not able to start using the property until after 8:30pm. We had a show to perform the next day and needed to rehearse as well as eat dinner so the interruptions with cleaning resulted in a very late night and lack of rest.
In addition to the cleanliness issue the internet was also out. We understood this was not the host’s fault, but did not anticipate their insistence on attending the property to fix it despite our clear requests to abandon the issue as we wanted privacy and needed to focus on preparing our show without further interruptions. Despite this being made clear in writing, the host’s husband arrived with five minutes notice in the morning, almost barging in before introducing himself or asking if it was ok to come in. I felt obliged to let him enter the property, but as he didn’t communicate that he would need to go upstairs in the vicinity of the private quarters where guests were still sleeping, I soon asked him to leave: the timing being even more inappropriate than I had realised. He ended up yelling at me when I communicated our discontent with the situation overall. The whole thing was just awful.
Even after this incident, the hosts continued to message us to insist on coming to the property and we felt forced to make a time with them. We did so, but only to placate them as they were refusing to listen to our need for space and privacy. When a male member of our group took over the communications and politely consulted with the host’s husband, they magically got the message and left us be, but not before sending messages telling us that we had ruined their weekend.
Needless to say, I would not recommend staying at Amanda’s place. We hope that the hosts have learnt from this experience and can respect the needs of guests in future, but if I were you, I’d look for somewhere else to stay.