Letto & latte

The place had a large living room, with a huge table and plenty of room for both of us to work on our laptops. There's also a small beach a five-minute walk away. One bedroom was large, bright, well equipped, and had a comfortable bed. The other was much worse, dark, windowless, and had a very old wardrobe. The bedrooms weren't at all equal. We stayed for a month with our one-year-old baby and two cats. Simona was kind and helped us communicate with the Italian post office, since we don't speak Italian well and needed someone to write a good email for us. She also served us amazing local cheese. We didn't have a car, and twice she offered us a ride into the city when she was going there. But after these nice gestures, she decided we had to do something for her too. She demanded that we let workers into our apartment to bring in a new sofa for the next guests. When I said it wasn't convenient, she got very angry. We had to calm her down to avoid a conflict, let them leave the sofa in our apartment, and clean up after the workers. In reality, this isn't a whole house, just part of a larger one, with other people renting the other parts and Simona living upstairs. There were plenty of other ways to bring in the sofa during our stay. We could hear all the neighbors' noise, shared the entrance with Simona despite the listing saying we'd have a separate private entry, and Simona used our backyard whenever she wanted. She'd warned us only once that she'd come into the backyard during our month there. The washing machine was shared with her too. None of this gave us privacy. Worse, a few times Simona entered our apartment while we were out without telling us. The location was very bad. The house is on a highway, with nothing nearby, no shops, cafe for morning coffee, or places to walk. There are loud nighttime music venues and a waste processing plant nearby, so opening a window wasn't an option. Either the music was super loud from 11 p.m. or midnight until 7 or 8 a.m., or it smelled like the middle of a garbage dump. The bus stop listed as being 100 meters away had buses so rarely that we could wait more than an hour, even an hour and a half. The Wi-Fi mostly didn't work or was very poor. The air conditioner was right across from the bed and blew directly on us, so we had to move the bed after getting sick. Its condensation drained into a large bottle in the room, which we had to empty every day. We cook a lot and chose the apartment because Simona's listing said the kitchen was well equipped, but it wasn't. There were very few utensils, just one knife, no pot lids, no microwave, and none of the other useful kitchen things. Breakfast was listed as included, but it wasn't. There was only one welcome drink in the fridge. The bathroom had hardly any toiletries, just a small amount of soap for a few days and some toilet paper. Dishwashing liquid was in the same state, as if it were only what the previous guests had left. For €5,000 a month, we could have found something much better. This vacation was spoiled.