Pleasant
2021-06-02
Traveller Type: young couple
: Pros:- Excellent location - Thissio is the best central area in Athens in my opinion, extremely close to all major attractions while avoiding the chaos of Monastiraki or Syntagma. It's fantastic from this point of view, in 10 minutes you can be virtually everywhere. Be aware however that the actual street on which the flat is located is not great at all. It's noisy in the morning, with lots of abandoned buildings on each side that seem like they might be collapsing at any moment and no chance of finding a parking spot (only relevant if you plan on renting a car). As an extra, on our first day, we were "greeted" by a beggar child who followed us down the street for 20 m and even tried to get inside our building. Not cool at all, but that's not something that the hosts from Live in Athens can control, so we discounted this.- Great hosts - We mostly interacted with Andreas who was an excellent host. He took the time to meet us for 15 minutes, he gave us excellent advice about places to eat, places to visit and he also arranged for us to rent a car. Absolutely nothing to reproach, a great guy all around.- Nice terrace - It's large, cozy, and a nice addition if you plan on spending a lot of time at your temporary home.- Nice view - Quite obviously, you can see the Akropolis from the terrace and from the mini-window in the bedroom. And that's great, the view is super nice. However, keep in mind that the Akropolis is a large hill and it's visible from almost everywhere in central Athens, the city was literally built around it, with this purpose in mind, so you'll have it in sight anyway most of the time. Looking back, I could have easily chosen something else without necessarily a great view but with other advantages, as it will be visible in the "Cons" section.
: Cons:- The apartment is small and the shape does not help. It's long, like a train wagon, but it is extremely small in width. To better understand, the only furniture that could be fitted in the bedroom was a small dressing and a bed; the bed cannot be accessed from the sides (there's no room to pass), you have to go down to the bottom of the bed and exit it that way. The mattress is also bad from my point of view, it's super soft and after 5 minutes of sitting, I felt like I was in a hole (but that's something that could be subjective, so again, I discounted it). The bathroom is tiny - when you sit on the toilet (pardon my french) you literally need to watch out not to bang your head on the sink (I'm 1.70 m tall, so it's really not about me). I recognize that the hosts did their best with the available space, but in my mind, these are things that should be known before making a decision.- The apartment is old and most of the furniture is the same. The hosts did try to add some modern wooden elements here and there but in general, it does not look that great. It even has that specific old smell (especially around the wooden frames of the doors) and you cannot get it out. In order to have hot water, you need to press a button and wait 20 minutes for the boiler, the shower head was leaking from all sides, a button was missing from the kitchen cabinet door, anyway, you get the picture. In my personal opinion, it's not a 9 or a "Superb" rating.- There are no mosquito nets on any of the windows so we basically had to stay with all the windows closed during the night and with the AC on, which was not that great.- The actual Akropolis view is nice as mentioned in the Pros section, but in all honesty, the surrounding beaten-up buildings render it useless (at least for us).