Jane's apartment is incredible! Fantastic view, fabulous location, sparkling clean, and stocked with everything you need! You can read on for a more detailed review, but I absolutely recommend booking this place IMMEDIATELY if it's available.
CHECK-IN/INFO
Check-in was a breeze. Jane lives in another part of Australia, so she wasn't there to meet us, but we picked up the keys at a location down the street and had no problems getting into the apartment. She left a gray booklet with info on the apartment -- how to operate the appliances, where to take out the trash, how to access the building's amenities (rooftop space, pool, laundry facilities), Wi-Fi password, take-out menus, and a couple of train cards for the metro.
THE SPACE
The apartment is located on the top floor (7th, or 8th if you're American; building has an elevator) of a small building in a gated community. It's a cute little studio with a small kitchen, bathroom with tub and shower, pull-down full-size Murphy bed, and a living area with a couch and flat-screen TV. The apartment isn't huge, but it's large enough that you can leave the Murphy bed down and still have plenty of space to move around. There's a bar-height table with three chairs (and two bar stools) that gives you an excellent view out the window of Sydney harbor and the opera house. The apartment doesn't have central heating/air, but there is a space heater and a fan for temperature control.
The apartment does get a ton of light -- there are Venetian blinds on the two windows in the kitchen area, and there's a electric metal shade that blocks out all light coming in from the side window (this also keeps the apartment from heating up too much in the afternoon sun), but if you're the kind of person who sleeps during daylight hours I would suggest a sleep mask (my husband and I had no problems as we do use sleep masks).
THE BED
Bedding - sheets, pillows, a duvet, and a couple of extra blankets - is provided, and the bed is very comfortable. The corners of the Murphy bed are a little sharp, but we put a towel over them and had no problems. There's plenty of space to move around while the bed is down.
THE KITCHEN
The kitchen is actually pretty big, but I wouldn't call it full-size -- it's got a medium-sized mini-fridge (with a working freezer), a microwave that doubles as a convection oven, and a two-burner electric hotplate, plus a sink, coffee maker, toaster, small dishwasher, and plenty of counter space. All the basics are provided -- dishes, silverware, cooking ware, knives, and there's a nicely-stocked pantry with olive oil, salt and pepper and several basic spices, coffee and tea, sugar, vinegar, pasta, rice, peanut butter, nutella, etc. This is actually one of the most well-stocked kitchens I've seen in an Airbnb -- everything I needed to cook was there.
THE BATHROOM
The bathroom is small and cute, with a cool modern-style sink and a shower with a tub. The shower has fantastic water pressure. Jane provides all the basics here, too -- soap, shower gel, and shampoo and conditioner (though we bring our own toiletries, it's nice when a host has some just in case), as well as towels and plenty of toilet paper.
The hot water heater for the apartment is fairly small -- Jane notes this in the info booklet -- so you can't take long showers. I'd say we ran out of hot water after about 15 minutes, but the heater seems to work fairly quickly -- we had no problems taking showers one after the other, even when the first person ran out of hot water at the end of their shower. So, plenty of time to get clean, and that's all that really matters :)
THE LOCATION
Jane's apartment is located in Potts Point, which is a great little neighborhood near the heart of the city. Potts Point is pretty lively, especially at night, but Jane's apartment is on a very quiet street one block away from Macleay street. So it's quiet at night, but just one block away you'll find tons of excellent restaurants, clubs, and bars. There's a grocery store, bank, and pharmacy all within 1.5 - 2 blocks of the apartment.
The apartment is very close to downtown -- closer than we expected, actually. There's a metro station about five minutes away (King's Cross), but we didn't use the metro at all -- we just walked over to places like the opera house, Circular Quay, etc. It takes about 25 minutes to walk to the opera house, and it's a very pleasant, pedestrian-friendly walk. We took a cab too and from the airport (costs around $50-$65AUD), but you could also take the metro (would cost a little less than $20AUD/person, so it might not be much cheaper than a cab).