{"id":8359,"date":"2013-11-09T09:22:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T17:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=8359"},"modified":"2013-11-09T09:36:16","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T17:36:16","slug":"some-thoughts-on-my-first-airbnb-stay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/09\/some-thoughts-on-my-first-airbnb-stay\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on My First Airbnb Stay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s the scenario — I was planning a trip to San Francisco and I wanted to spend one evening in the city with friends that live there. We planned to get dinner and, I’ll just say it, do some drinking. I wanted to be able to stumble back to my bed when we were done. I used the map on Airbnb<\/a> to find a place very close to where my friends live. I wanted to use public transit to get there — I did not want to rent a car.<\/p>\n

It was easy to find a place that met all those requirements — and for about 100 dollars, and that’s a bargain in San Francisco. There’s just no way you can get a private room for that kind of money in the city.<\/p>\n

The room I booked was in the heart of the Castro in a second floor walk up railroad flat. It was shared by three guys — a couple and their roomie. My room was at the front of the house overlooking a quiet street; the room was great, it was immaculate and comfortable and pretty cool, actually. And the location was amazing, it was exactly where I wanted to be.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what I expected, but I had almost no interactions with the guys that live in the house save to get the key when I got there and then, a little chatter in the morning. It was all very “find what you need in the kitchen” and “if you buy groceries, here’s where you can stack them.” But there was no breakfast with my bed and I wasn’t offered access to shared coffee or tea. I don’t know if this is standard — probably every stay is different.<\/p>\n

It hadn’t occurred to me that I would need to share the loo and the shower with the residents, or that I could end up in a four person house with only one bath. Luckily, these older apartments commonly have the loo separate from the bath, so it’s not a complete bottleneck in the morning, but I hadn’t anticipated that I would need to share at all; that was an oversight.<\/p>\n

I don’t mind padding down the hall in my jammies at midnight but I wasn’t crazy for the rooming house\/hostel lineup for the shower in the morning. If I were to do this again, I’d pay closer attention to what the listing says about the shared bath. I’m not that fussy about sharing, but I think I’d look for a place that has more than one bathroom. For a little bit more money, I’d have been able to book a place with a private bath and still saved a pile of dough over what a hotel room costs.<\/p>\n

I loved being able to pick a place in a specific neighborhood, I loved being in a place that was the opposite of a generic hotel room, and when the other options are 400 dollar hotel rooms, well, it’s hard to argue with the price. My guess is that you can never tell exactly what you’re going to get, but the risk seems pretty low, easy to mitigate with a well placed questions, and hey, travel is an adventure, it’s nice to have a few unknowns. I will absolutely book another Airbnb stay.<\/p>\n

Total cost of my stay: 114.00<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s the scenario — I was planning a trip to San Francisco and I wanted to spend one evening in the city with friends that live there. We planned to get dinner and, I’ll just say it, do some drinking. I wanted to be able to stumble back to my bed when we were done. … <\/p>\n


…read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elsewhere","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8359"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8362,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8359\/revisions\/8362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}