Holiday Review

Entire House
Beautiful Village Life in Andalusia

Jimena de la Frontera, Spain

3 guests · 1 bedroom · 1 bed · 1 bath

Mark, June 2018

We stayed one night at Karl's place in Jimena de la Frontera in southern Spain. Let me begin with the PROs. As advertised the house was beautifully situated in a whitewashed medieval village and from the sunny roof terrace we could see miles to the Rock of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. The cobblestone lanes were so steep I had to goose the Fiat. The pleather lazyboy didn't exactly capture the gypsy soul of Andalusia, but that's fine because the sheets and towels smelled of fresh detergent.

The main PRO was price. At $53 USD a night it was the cheapest in town. We planned this trip on short notice and could barely afford three weeks in Spain. Our summer had freed up unexpectedly and we needed to leave home. Hospital bills piled up. As I told Karl in my first email, my wife had spent four months in Jimena de la Frontera as a teenager and wanted to return. He didn't reply but that's OK we're all busy and besides, instructions for letting ourselves in were clear and I wasn't seeking a friendship during our four nights especially since Karl lives in South Africa. Point is I knew this wasn't going to be a palace.

CONs

It was already 8 p.m. when we arrived and C took me walking up to the old castle ruins on the hill where she used to hang out as a kid, purple sun lingering, so it wasn't until late that I saw the place was a bit dirty. I'm not a fussy person. I'm not even very clean. I've spent hundreds of nights just throwing a sleeping bag down in the dirt, and C and I lived in the back of a car for two months in Mexico. But the shower was stained with mildew and paint flaked off. Same thing behind the toilet, a black array of mold. It wasn't a matter of not having been scrubbed, rather a general sense of disrepair. The shower curtain was torn, patched with masking tape. The old, white plaster walls were smudged with fingerprints and dotted with nail holes. I suppose we could have bailed right away, but by the time we got a whiff of the musty mattress it was midnight.

Still I felt like a jerk canceling the remaining three nights. Since Karl's place lacks Wi-Fi I had to compose my complaint the next day from the terrace of the hotel down the block, all shaded by palms and lime trees, succulents blooming in clay pots. I've never canceled an Airbnb. You can read my other reviews; I'm no complainer. Look at Maria's place in Madrid—five stars across the board. Maria was waiting there when we arrived bedraggled from the airport after the overnight flight from California and she gifted us a bottle of Spanish wine and a tortilla. You can see that my review was 100% positive even though I didn't sleep well, but that's because I was awakened in the night by C's sobbing, obviously not Maria's fault.

Karl's response was swift and polite. He offered a partial refund, saying the system was forcing him to charge a cancelation fee of fifty-five dollars. Fine. He added:

some times an occasional guest creates the perception of problems that stems from another reason that later emerges because after all it's not a hotel and people often project that need for that type of environment.

I was irked that Karl implied that the mildew was not a problem but merely my perception of a problem, and that the peeling paint was just my projection of inner turmoil, and that I didn't know what a hotel was, but really I just wanted my money back. By...