Airbnb

A blogger mentioned her disappointment after a night in an Airbnb so I thought I would write about my experiences with them.

The first time was 2 years ago when I visited a friend in the US and we wanted to stay in New York. A colleague advised my friend to try Airbnb so we booked 3 nights in Park Slope, Brooklyn in a beautiful Brownstone House. We didn't see much of our hosts except on the first night but they were so hospitable and told us to help ourselves to anything including wine, bottles of water etc. My friend made use of the jacuzzi whilst enjoying a glass of wine. Our hosts also printed information and maps for us and told us the best places to eat. We think they stayed in the basement so we pretty much had the house to ourselves.

The 2nd experience was a farmhouse in rural upstate New York. We wanted to visit myfriend's son who was at college in Ithaca and also tour the Finger Lakes area.

Again we more or less had the place to ourselves apart from seeing the farmer briefly each evening then he kindly gave us a tour of the farm and told us the history of the place and then we were left to wander about on our own.  We had a big bedroom with our own bathroom and a dining room. This area we could lock so totally to ourselves. Then the kitchen/sitting room we shared but he must have been out very early as we didn't see him. It was wonderful sitting in that huge farmhouse kitchen watching the birds on the feeder.

Our 3rd Airbnb was in Amsterdam when my friend came over to the UK last year and we flew from Stansted for a 2 night break. We were on the 4th floor of an apartment so plenty of exercise as no lift! Our host was a very friendly young man who we saw very little of but the first evening he was very surprised to see 2 "old ladies" in an airbnb so patiently explained that it didn't include breakfast in spite of the name. We told him we knew that and didn't expect it. He then went out shopping and brought back bacon and eggs for our breakfast as he was so amazed by our intrepid spirit. We did laugh and felt quite ancient. The apartment had been cleaned by his sister as we arrived but he obviously didn't do any cooking as although everything was clean, food was out of date in the fridge but that didn't worry us as we didn't eat it.

This is the entrance to the apartment and above the view from the bedroom.

I had one more experience and that was last month when db wanted to have a week in Clacton so we could also visit his family.  I found a caravan on Airbnb on a holiday park. It was clean and well equipped and in a good position not far from a Holland on sea and the beach.  We didn't see our host but collected our key from the office but a lady came from the next caravan and introduced herself as the friend of the host and if we needed anything to ask her. It was good we had the place to ourselves but also knowing there was somebody nearby if necessary.

 So altogether very satisfied with our experiences.  I would definitely look at Airbnb first when planning a holiday.