Live It Gran Via

After a 16-hour flight to Madrid, we were told the room we got wasn’t the one we’d booked, despite the photos online. Then the receptionist asked us to pay an extra €15 per night for a bigger room, saying not every room is photographed for publicity. That felt unacceptable. We felt misled and disrespected, and it ruined our honeymoon. We’ll never return, and strongly advise others to avoid the place.

During my five-month stay, I went at least a month without hot water. The agency kept saying someone would come soon, but did nothing to help. The apartments are old and dirty, and the first thing I had to do was clean mine. One of the worst room rentals I’ve had. I wouldn’t recommend Live it at all.

The room itself was cute and spacious, with two desks and two wardrobes, and the hotel is in a great location. But the shared bathrooms and hallway smelled overwhelmingly of sewage for our whole stay. We think it may have been a pipe problem. If they fixed that, the place would be much more pleasant. It was hard to sleep. The hotel is on a large, noisy street that stays loud all night, and the windows let in a lot of sound. The doors have frosted glass panels, so hallway lights woke us when people came in at night. The lights don’t turn off automatically either, and I had to get up several times each night to switch them off myself.

The apartment was dirty, and the water stopped working altogether for one day. Construction noise has been awful: for the last three months, drilling has started at 8 every morning and carried on until evening. What you get is way too overpriced. There’s supposed to be a cleaning lady, Teresa, whose name appears in the good reviews, but she isn’t there. They have you scan a QR-Code for the Teresa Review, and I think it’s fake. The cleaning lady doesn’t come every 15 days, as you can see in the photo. Unless something changes, I’ll leave my review.