Copenhagen – AirBnb – first time ever!

As I told you in my last post, I had a wonderful weekend trip to Copenhagen, early June, and we tried out AirBnb for the very first time.  I thought I would let you in on how that experience went 🙂

AirBnb
We decided to try out AirBnb, it was a first for us, and it worked reasonable well. You can find all types of places to live through Airbnb, from guest rooms in family homes to apartments and even large properties. There are options in a variety of price ranges.

We rented a small apartment/condo, at a pretty convenient location, as it was within easy distance to just about everything 🙂

We loved having a place we could call “our own”, where we could relax and do whatever we wanted. We enjoyed the heck out of the small balcony, we could take as long as we wanted in the bathroom, there was a kitchen if we wanted to make food and we could walk around in pj’s until we had to leave the house..

Now, we did learn a thing or two on this first try:

• always check what the fees are in the local currency –
  we had a change of fees due to the owners having had a leak from the apartment above. Since the refurbish wasn’t quite done, some of us had to sleep on a madras on the floor. As a result we got a reduction in price. Now… we thought the reduction was more than it turned out to be. The flaw? We were thinking Norwegian kroner, rather than Danish kroner – lesson learned!
• check out the details on photos of the place properly – when in doubt. ASK questions!
  our place was kinda cute, but we had a bathroom that had a few flaws:
  – there was no curtain around the shower, so everything got wet
  – there was no proper shower head (homemade, makeshift solution)
  – we wouldn’t have minded if had been a bit cleaner – but then again, our standards are a bit high 😉
• ask loads of questions before you leave –
  REMEMBER! There are no stupid questions, YOU want to make sure the place is a good fit for YOU! 
  – we had asked a few questions – like was the beds in the children’s room large enough for adults, the answer was yes, but we forgot to ask if the covers/duvets was large enough for adults, which they were not 😦
  – we also forgot to ask about noise level outside – turns out there was a bar right outside the children’s bedroom, where one of us had to sleep, or not sleep as it was…
  – is there air-con? It was really warm in Copenhagen, and air-con would have been nice. The place did not have it.. hence K having to sleep with the windows open, not getting any slepp because of the bar mentioned above.
  – ask about the closeness to things around you – we did good on this one
  – make sure you have the correct address – we thought we had, turns out there was an error on the website, and we were waiting forever for the host.. outside the wrong house!

Even though we didn’t find our perfect place right away, there is no doubt we will try AirBnb again, as we loved having our own place.

Living in hotels having to meet at a certain time in the lobby, takes a little of the spontaneity out of it, having our own place we notices, put the spontaneity back into our trip.

Planning our day is easier when you can do that over a cup of coffee, with the PC close at hand to find things online, together. Sure you can do this over breakfast or meet at the lobby in a hotel, but hanging around the kitchen table or lounging in a living room when you make the plans, beats the lobby hands down, anytime 😉

Have you tried Airbnb? What is your experience?