13 May 2017 Corneliano d’Alba

Yes, I forgot to post a blog yesterday. We traveled from Aosta to Corneliano d’Alba. It was a pretty short drive, we checked in early in the day, did grocery shopping, took a walk, blah blah blah… are you dying of boredom yet? Yes, probably.

But this new apartment is really beautiful. It’s big… huge, in fact. It’s got a lot of bedrooms and bathrooms. And the kitchen is pretty nice (not big, but good). The TV service basically sucks. Most of the channels don’t come through clearly, but oh well. We aren’t here to watch tv. Anyway… I’ll get back to this in a minute.

This morning, I woke up at 4AM. I know it was 4 because the church bells woke me up. Which is good because I had to pee. And then they woke me up at 5 and at 6 and I finally gave up around 7 or something. I don’t remember. It sounds worse than it was. I did get back to sleep. No huge deal. But anyways, today… we got up, figured out the apartment, went shopping, had lunch, and visited Alba, which is really close. It’s nice out, you guys. No jacket today. It was like 70-something degrees. And supposed to get hotter here. Wow… such a change from when we left Italy in January when it was snowing in the south! Anyways, I digress again. We got back to the apartment, had cocktails, and made dinner. And here we are. Watching some TV. So see? Now I’ve come full circle.

And now that I’ve got the day’s events out of the way, I can write about what I really have in my head.

what I’ve learned from airbnb

First of all, if you actually use airbnb as it was originally intended… kind of as a house swap while you’re out of town, I don’t see how it even works? Because you’re not there to let guests in and welcome them? So who the hell is supposed to do this? Anyway, most of the places we’ve stayed, we meet the host. Sometimes we don’t, sometimes we call them on WhatsApp… and later wonder… “does this person even have the authority to rent this place or do they just know where the keys are?”  Anyways… here are a few things I’ve learned:

• Meet your visitors. Even for just a few minutes to give a quick tour, answer questions, give keys. No biggie. We may not see each other ever again, which is fine, but it’s nice to meet people at the beginning. We also like to see people before we leave, but that’s not always in the cards. It’s weird when you don’t meet the host and they just give you a code, or worse, instructions to “tailgate someone into the building… go to the 13th floor and the door will be open, keys on the table.” The code part is actually fine. I like the flexibility that gives us… like if we are late, I don’t worry. And we can be early or whatever and that’s nice. But I do like to meet the host. One of the weirdest was when we stayed in a basement apartment in Portland, Oregon. We had a code to get in and never once even saw our host. We heard them sometimes, but never saw them or met them… so odd. Most of the time, if the person is in town (and the place isn’t managed by a company), we meet them, even after our actual check-in.
• Leave a manual. It’s nice to know how stuff works. And the wifi password. And what to do with the garbage (especially if it’s a self-check in situation). And if there are any weird things. Or any recommendations in the neighborhood. This is just generally a nice thing to have.
• Empty the fucking fridge. No one is going to eat/drink that opened container of anything. Full fucking stop. Maybe you’re a starving college student… wait, if you’re a starving college student, you aren’t staying in these places. These places are too expensive for you. So clean out the fridge. We’ve been to several places where they have (nicely) left a pint of milk and that is great. It’s new, unopened. Awesome. But that is the only thing in the fridge. There is no half consumed bottle of coke. There is no partially eaten butter. Or juice, or whatever the fuck. Just a new container of milk. For the morning coffee. That is very nice.
• Leave a “gift” of sorts. Some milk, maybe a bottle of wine, maybe other breakfast items, or something local (in Sicily we had a package full of local pastries, which wasn’t good for the waistline, but was delicious… and we went back to that shop a few times for other stuff… win/win). Nothing fancy. But a little gift is nice. It’s not mandatory or anything. But if you leave the fridge full of crap, I might take away some stars.
• Make sure the kitchen stuff is clean. Not just the counter tops. But the dishes and pots and pans. And put them away. I know, this is a little extra work. A little. But the previous guest may or may not have cleaned stuff very well. I’d just say, give the place a once over… check the stuff that’s already put away just to make sure it’s clean. And empty the fucking fridge. This doesn’t always happen, but sometimes a previous guest isn’t good with the whole cleaning thing, so stuff isn’t clean. And it’s gross. And it just taints my entire opinion of a place.
• Bathrooms – clean the fucking shower drain at least sometimes. We’ve had problems with slow drains. There was the place in London where the shower drain would fill up and then suddenly drain just fine a few minutes later. Then there was another drain, I can’t remember where, that was full. We (Husband) had to clean it out. Then this current place. The shower has these odd pieces of stone (slabs) on the floor. They look cool, but the shower drains slow (Husband’s report after first shower). And I went to shower and noticed a lot of hair around the perimeter… and that’s just nasty. And the drain didn’t drain, so also annoying. So we picked up some cleaning supplies and gloves and I cleaned the drain and the slabs… and it was disgusting. Hair hair and more hair. I mean, I get it, shower drains get nasty. That’s just life. So clean this shit out so your guests don’t have to. Also, this colors my opinion of a place and I start looking at EVERYTHING to see if it’s clean. Kind of a bummer.
• If you have a washer, have a drying rack. Or a dryer… but some of these foreign dryers don’t really do much, so have a drying rack. The last London apartment had a dryer that was broken AND no drying rack, so we had to hang our clothes strategically around the apartment. Rather annoying. Most places have a rack. Some racks are better than others.
• Important things all kitchens need to have (this list isn’t everything, but it is stuff that has been missing from at least one, if not more, apartments where we’ve stayed): hot mitts, an oven, at least one large cutting board, knives that are sharp or can be sharpened, a big mixing bowl or two, a baking dish, a frying pan, a sauce pan, a colander, a cheese grater, a coffee maker of some kind, scissors (nearly everywhere has had scissors, actually), decent wine glasses
• Be responsive. We’ve had the occasional issue, which is to be expected. Like in our cottage in the Cotswolds, the first morning I found out the microwave was broken. It turned on and did things, but didn’t do microwavy things like heat stuff up. So I messaged the owner and we had a new one a few days later. Obviously, as a host, you aren’t checking every last thing all the time. That’s silly. So you rely on your guests to tell you when shit is broken. And then you need to fix it, hopefully quickly. Even if they say it’s not a big deal, it probably is… and so it’s in your best interest to just fix the problem as quickly as possible. We haven’t had a lot of things go wrong… just a few things. Nothing huge either. But it’s nice when the host/owner is responsive and fixes stuff quickly.
• And, since it’s not only on the host to do everything, we always make sure that we leave a place in great condition. We clean the kitchen, run the dishwasher, sweep the floors, and take out the garbage. Other stuff… strip the bed and leave all the laundry in a pile somewhere logical. Clean the toilets. We just like to leave a place almost like we haven’t been there. Which is funny because, when we are there, we are THERE… you know what I mean? We spread out… we leave clutter all over the place. We are messy and the kitchen is probably the worst. The only place we weren’t able to really get it as nice as we’d like was Lecce because the water was broken… the pipes were messed up after the snow storm, so we had a good reason, but it still kinda sucked. We felt bad. But we had to leave a day early, so… not the end of the world.
• Also we try and be quiet and respectful of the neighbors and the area. We realize we are guests, so we aren’t disruptive or loud (hopefully).

At the end of the day, we really appreciate that people open their homes, or their investment properties or whatever to strangers like us. It’s fun. We meet interesting characters and sometimes we don’t meet but we exchange random emails or calls on weirdo technology I’m probably too old to be using. It’s great and one of my favorite things about long term travel.