My first AirBnb experience

Have you ever had that feeling that things will turn out bad? This actually happened to me last weekend when I booked (for my first time ever!) an airbnb apartment. I am a skeptical person and all the time I try to read and document myself on everything that I want to do.

My boyfriend came up one day with this spontaneous idea to go one weekend to Amsterdam and OF COURSE it is really expensive (especially as a student that tries to save up some money) to book a 150$ room at some dubious hotel. That is why I ended up searching for an apartment on Airbnb, having really big second thoughts about it. Anyways, I’ve read a lot of reviews from different apartments and then I discovered an amazing place not so far away from the city center. I talked to the guy that owned the place, everything seemed that it was on the right track. I payed with paypal (so it was secure) and then I just had to wait for the amazing trip.

 

Then, everything started to make me freak out a bit, because the trip was going to happen and I did not talk to the guy since I last payed him. I started imagining that he will be some mischievous person that just wants the money and who doesn’t own the apartment from the pictures. I started googling about others experiences with airbnb, I even ended up on a website called http://www.airbnbhell.com that just talks about bad experiences. Gosh, I really wanted to be over with the trip.

After several days the guy wrote to me back asking when we’ll arrive. I started gaining trust again. We arrived in Amsterdam on a Friday afternoon, finding the apartment exactly as the guy described it. Even though I haven’t met him in person, his friend welcomed us. It was a really great experience. Things turned out to be great, having an amazing weekend with friends and even more fun than we would have had if we booked a hotel room.

All in all, I don’t know if the stories from airbnbhell.com are true or not, but what I know is that I will definitely use Airbnb again and again and again…haha