Athens Residence Apartments

The apartment its self refurbished recently. There are 4 apartments . Two on the first floor and two on the second. Overall apartment has all necessary, located greatly and clean. Towels changed once in a two days. And bedding once in a 3 days. Mattress is medium firm and pillows are just perfect. There are small reception on the first floor from which the light coming in to the apartment, that is too say create inconvinience. especially if there are guests coming in late at night, the led light switch on/of automatically i guess, waking us up several times. The first floor apartment has very narrow shower cabin where are no shelves to put shampoo. This only two things that could be improved. Over will definitely recommend this place and come back again.

Although this accommodation is highly rated, I did not find it worthy of praise. It was disappointing over the 2 months I spent there. It might work for a short-term traveler, but it is not a good choice for long-term. I feel obligated to share some of my issues with this accommodation. I stayed in two different apartments – with a week away at an island. The first apt. was immediately inside the front door, and the reception area was just outside the apt. door. Street noise and conversations at the front desk were annoying. The shower in my first apartment leaked badly! I complained and was told to use extra floor mats to mop up the leakage. The other major issue was the noise from above. It’s an old building and you can hear every footstep made on the hardwood floors. Sometimes, it sounded like the guests upstairs were hammering above me, and when late night guests who came in after 1 am or later – well, it wasn’t a pretty picture. Had I been aware of this, I never ever would have booked this apartment. For anyone wanting privacy and quiet, this is not your place! After a week away, I returned and stayed in the apartment next door which was slightly better in terms of street noise and noise from the front reception area. It had a weird layout but a little more privacy. However, it opened into a large, common courtyard and any and all noises from the area were audible. NEITHER apartment had good refrigeration (over a day to freeze ice cubes) nor were they laptop friendly. I was constantly bending over my laptop getting cramps in my neck and back – there was no desk or comfortable place to use a computer in either apartment. One of the other long-term guests had two cats which she allowed to roam throughout the building. I like cats, so this was not a big deal, but still, I was surprised to have them enter my apartment. Also, they would meow loudly, especially when she put them in their carrying cases or was not there – very annoying. Several times the WiFi connection was “interrupted” and kicked me off. This was usually for a short duration, and I was usually able to get back on within a few minutes. Once, I lost data attached to a document I had worked on for hours, and I complained. I always advise that I need a STRONG Internet connection, and I did that with this accommodation as well. Interenet is vital for a traveler! The thing that was most annoying is that after I notified the owner / manager of the problem, I was told there was nothing wrong with the Internet connection, nothing like that had ever happened before, and it was my responsibility to back up data. The insinuation being I was making up the problem – really? Since it was the evening before my departure, what could I do. My resposne was not polite! The on-site manager seemed to always be there working very diligently, but clearly had no authority to make decisions, and so would defer complaints or problems to the owner. Most often, any situation that was out of the managers control was simply ignored. As an experienced traveler, I’ve had to re-learn a few things to beware of when booking accommodations – I didn’t see these things coming, but they definitely didn’t make my stay comfortable, and I would not stay there again. Many accommodations promote themselves based on high ratings from various sources – TripAdvisor, etc. – displaying excellent ratings right in your face the minute you enter. Most guests don't write thoughtful reviews accurately describing their stay. They rarely criticize and usually base their review on how nice someone might have been to them during their stay. Honest reviews are necessary for other travelers.