Sorry folks. It’s long. TLDR at bottom.

Rented an apartment near a festival location in London a few months ahead of the show this summer, the place had good ratings, lots of reviews and comments that were recent. Price was mostly in line with places around although I was a bit late to booking so choice was more limited.

As we arrive things started going south fast. I had Google mapped the location so I knew it was above some shops, food- but not that it was above a super busy kebab place open all hours that had 5+ people lingering at the building front door at all times, a door we had to key in a digital code… it was awkward but we didn’t feel unsafe, but not ideal.

We get inside the main door and see furniture, beds, sofas, etc. stacked in the hallways… weird. We head up to the 3rd floor where the apartment we rented was. Inside, it’s okay, not very clean and furniture was worn, but it was 3 nights and we planned to be out in London and at the festival most of our time. At this point it’s about 10pm so we settle in for the night. Two teens and two adults. We split off. Son and I take to the couch to netflix, the others to each room to relax. I’m on the sofa facing the kitchen and out of the corner of my eye I see a little mouse run across the room, into the kitchen and disappear into a cabinet.

Ok! I freak out, I don’t much like little creatures inside the house- but given the location of the apartment above a food place and the overall less than ideal state of the place it wasn’t super shocking. I’m not in any way able to relax, but my kids and husband are not taking this as something we can do much about at this point, so and I contact the booking site to report and try to relax. It was too late to do too much at that point anyhow.

We had headed to bed contemplating how we relocate or if it was really needed at that point, it was just a little mouse. He was not seen again but the chewed up packs of sugar and milk were found in the morning (photo).

Jump to 3am. I was up to pee and take a quick look in the mirror before heading back to bed and see a brown bug on my shirt. I had never seen a bedbug before so I didn’t know what this thing was so I grabbed it in a paper, snapped a photo and went straight to google. Yep. Giant bedbug. Like old and mature. Now I am completely freaking out. Searching tells me to move all bags and clothing off the floor or to a bathroom, so here I am at 3am grabbing everyone’s stuff and sticking it in the shower. I check the beds, no signs of anything. I check our bags. Nothing. I move everything we haven’t worn in the house to the bathroom and everything that came in contact with the place on the dining table. Needless to say I didn’t sleep at all. I sat like a zombie in the corner waiting for the sun to come up so I can get everyone out.

Morning comes I have the kids strip everything they wore into a pile, and we search. Bedbugs. On one kids sweats, shirts and everything. Big suckers. We check for bites… none so far! I call the booking site immediately to find somewhere else to go- there’s no way we can stay… and they offer.. a deep cleaning today while we go out, an apology and no refund or offer to help find another place!?

I am now carefully explaining to this poor young girl handling the call that you cannot simple “clean” these off. I check the website listing, two days ago someone else complained of getting weird bites and having their food chewed up. Two days ago!! So this was not a one off. Of course I never came back to see the latest reviews, I booked a month ago.

I find a hotel that can fit all four, that day, costing way too much as it was day of the festival and it’s London- we ditch the clothes we all wore and get the hell out of there. Thank goodness we brought no extra guests with us, we even replaced my son’s shoes as he left them by the sofa (which we found bugs on before we left). Our best guess is the sofa and bed inside was the one infested as we only found them on us two who relaxed on it the night before.

On the way out we found bedbugs crawling on the furniture in the hallways too. So now we know why it was stacked there… uff.

Nightmare stay. The most infuriating part. Place is still listed after reporting it, reporting them to the council and posting a negative review along with quite a few others. Beware out there!

TLDR: booked a place that turned out to have not only mice but bedbugs. Had to ditch the clothes we were wearing and a nice pair of shoes. Lost a night of sleep and had nightmares for weeks that we brought them along with us.

Safety glass did its job, but man did it do some damage. Deer going 60, didn't even see it until impact.

Fan and light are both turned off. The string for the fan broke off with the fan at full blast, and whoever installed the fan didn't do so very well, so the fan shakes when it's on full. I basically can't use my light until I fix the fan.

After two months in school, my son's water bottle "accidentally" spilled all over his school laptop. He had a major meltdown and I grabbed the first thing I could find that was dry to salvage it.

No clue if Im doing the right thing, but a glass of wine after the fiasco calmed my nerves.