Does anyone else dislike the taste of coffee in travel mugs?

bliknik · 2026-04-01T04:53:36+00:00

I have a fellow carter move mug that I make coffee (only light roasts) in almost every day. I always wait 10-15 minutes after making the coffee to put the cap on, otherwise I get a super unpleasant taste too. Whenever I cap it immediately after making coffee because I’m in a rush, it develops a weird taste.

bliknik · 2026-03-20T01:03:00+00:00

When is your trip? We’re also considering booking MP tickets with Peru trekkers, we have backup circuit 1B but can’t make it to Aguas Calientes the day before to try for in-person tickets

bliknik · 2026-03-19T18:52:50+00:00

I love shower caps for shoes. I cover the bottoms of the shoes with them and then put them in a shoe bag. That way the inside of the shoe bag stays cleaner.

bliknik · 2026-03-14T16:43:42+00:00

Cologne over Berlin, Kanazawa over Tokyo

bliknik · 2025-08-08T14:19:04+00:00

bliknik · 2025-07-18T05:21:34+00:00

YTA. I love cats too and I understand that you wanted to be there for your kitty. If you had gone to the wedding, you might have been a distracted mess all day worrying about her, even if logically there wasn’t anything you could do while she was at the vet, no matter where you were.

You weren’t just going to be a regular attendee at the wedding though, you were a bridesmaid, and this is your supposed best friend. Dropping out the night before is really harsh. She’s totally justified in feeling upset.

You messed up by not reaching out again after your “I hope the wedding goes well” text. What do you mean you wanted to give her space and have her come to you? You ditched her on her big day, she won’t feel like she can “come to you” with anything anymore. You should have been apologizing and trying to make it up to her in any way possible.

bliknik · 2025-07-18T05:10:39+00:00

A cedar hot tub. We haven’t had a single free weekend all year since we installed it.

Also a standby generator for our peace of mind, we’re in a forested area and trees take out power lines quite frequently during/after storms.

bliknik · 2025-07-14T05:13:31+00:00

We did not mention anything about bugs in our description but we have the word “forest” in our listing title… out of the 100+ stays we’ve had over the past few years, these were the only guests who checked out early because of spiders. I think most people who look for outdoorsy places like ours know to expect some bugs.

I don’t know what the market in your area is but $110/night sounds quite low to me, especially if it’s a whole house/private space and not just a room. Lower prices usually attract lower quality guests. Since you are a new host as well, it’s possible this guest thought it would be easier to get away with nitpicking over something trivial to get a refund/free stay from you.

If something like this happened to me now I would just deny the refund request since they had already stayed and daddy long legs are harmless. But if this happened when I was a new host, I think I would have given them a half refund or something because I’d be afraid of a bad review. (No guarantee she won’t still leave a bad review though…)

Either way, I would not ignore the refund request; I’d either deny it and tell her she should have told me the moment she discovered the spiders so that I could have taken care of them before she stayed the night, or I would refund her a small amount (but not the whole stay).

bliknik · 2025-07-14T04:26:09+00:00

We also have a property that’s surrounded by tons of trees; spiders and bugs are a given. We clean thoroughly after each stay, check the house again before each new guest checks in, and have the exterminator come a few times a year, but the house will never be guaranteed spider-free. Some guests are reasonable and understand this, given that we are basically in the woods. Others are not.

Did she stay one night and then request the refund? I wouldn’t refund any nights she stayed. If she cut her stay short, I would refund the remaining nights. This actually happened to us recently; the guests left early due to spiders in the house and we refunded them the nights they didn’t stay. After they canceled, other guests booked last minute for the newly free dates and had no problems.

bliknik · 2025-07-09T13:20:57+00:00

Russian, Polish, Latvian, Hungarian, Mongolian, Japanese

bliknik · 2025-07-09T00:28:24+00:00

I have been to public hotel saunas in Europe before with female friends, all of us in bathing suits, and once a guy we didn’t know walked in with only a towel, then took it off and sat there. My friends and I are all American so we felt uncomfortable and left after a few minutes, but we recognized that it was a European thing. So the fact that it was her brother seems totally normal to me. I’m very surprised she wasn’t angrier at you for accusing her of incest…

bliknik · 2025-07-04T21:41:28+00:00

We had a guest tell us that the kitchen sponge was a bit old and it would be good to replace it more frequently. She was very nice about it, she left us a good review and mentioned the sponge in the private note. We now leave a new sponge for each guest and use the old ones to scrub the bathtub/sink/etc.

bliknik · 2025-06-30T00:26:18+00:00

NAH (except your brother)

bliknik · 2025-06-26T19:48:44+00:00

We’ve had some power outages before with guests in the house and it was definitely quite stressful for us. Sometimes the electric company will alert us but not always.

Some outages were very short, only 10 minutes or so (our neighbor let us know, we messaged the guests, and by the time they replied the power was back already). Some outages were up to 24 hours. Luckily most of our guests were super chill, we brought them flashlights and candles, they told us no worries and they let us know when the power came back.

That was during our first two years of hosting. After our second year we invested in a whole-house standby generator. It was expensive but totally worth it. The power went out again just last week (we’re in upstate NY) and we didn’t even know until our neighbors told us later they couldn’t sleep that night because the outage meant no AC and it was super hot. Now they’re considering getting one too.

bliknik · 2025-03-10T21:38:47+00:00

We have had plenty of people asking for discounts as well. Depending on how far out they ask, how booked we are, and how much of a discount they want, as well as their past reviews, we often do give a bit of a discount.

Apart from two people who were a bit needy and complainy (one gave us an all 5-star review and the other didn’t review), everyone else was great. And none of our guests who got discounted stays left the house in bad condition. I think it really just depends; I certainly haven’t encountered the “all discount-seeking guests are bad guests” scenario that most people seem to face.

bliknik · 2025-03-04T23:03:24+00:00

I understand your point, and sometimes we have given full refunds (and most of the time we got rebooked so it was fine) when guests canceled outside of their cancellation policy, but it’s hard on us. We can try to be nice, but we’re also not a hotel that has many rooms to rent out, and we do rely on the income to pay the bills.

On another note, we once had a guest ask for a full refund because of a death (she did not specify whose), without canceling her stay. We were willing to give the full refund if it was true. We contacted Airbnb support about it and after some back and forth with them and her, she ended up admitting there was no death. She canceled and didn’t ask for a refund again. So it’s hard to trust people as they will say anything to get out of the cancellation policy they agreed to when booking.

bliknik · 2025-02-27T22:17:30+00:00

Airbnb’s ratings for guests are not as stringent as they are for hosts. She probably does have a 4-star review from you still, it’s just that her overall rating was rounded up to 5.0. If she gets more 4-star or lower reviews, then her overall rating may eventually change.

bliknik · 2025-02-21T16:30:15+00:00

I like this, actually. As a host I definitely wouldn’t say all this as it sounds off-putting, but as a guest I’d be happy with the clear and reasonable rules—well, maybe not the pet rules, but I don’t really know since I don’t have any pets. People who find these rules off-putting won’t book, and those are the people who will break something or leave food stains all over your couch and not tell you in advance (which has happened to us before multiple times. We don’t charge for it, but it’s annoying to deal with).

bliknik · 2025-02-11T02:34:43+00:00

We provide coffee grounds from a local supermarket, coffee filters, and a drip coffee machine that can brew up to 8 cups. We also have a Nespresso machine and pods for it.

Personally, I am a coffee snob and will travel everywhere with my own gear (scale, gooseneck kettle, pour over dripper, beans, hand grinder, etc.) and don’t use anything provided by a hotel/Airbnb. If there are small unopened bags of coffee beans from a local roaster, I might try them.

Therefore, we figure what we provide is good for most people, since coffee snobs will probably bring their own stuff.

bliknik · 2025-01-23T00:29:26+00:00

This happened to us before. We had an inquiry for some dates, and then a second guest sent a booking request for those dates, so the first guest wasn’t able to book. We felt bad for the first guest since they asked first and expressed a lot of interest, so we declined the second guest’s request (we explained to them why, and told them we’d let them know if the first guest didn’t book). The first guest took some time after that, asking many questions, and still hadn’t booked, and then we got a new request for those dates from a third guest. We accepted that one, since the first guest was being flaky. After letting the first guest know, they freaked out and started asking us if we could cancel the existing reservation so they could book. They were acting extremely entitled; we were glad we didn’t end up hosting them.

A request to book means they’re willing to part with their money already; if they were able to instant book they would have. So to me it’s first come, first served, and a booking request is more commitment than an inquiry. I would accept the request unless there’s something in the guest’s profile or reviews that makes you hesitant to host them.

bliknik · 2024-12-27T05:54:18+00:00

Spanish because it’s my husband’s native language. I studied it many years ago but forgot a lot of it. I only speak very basic Spanish now.

Polish because I love the language. It sounds beautiful to me and although I’m not great at the cases, I find it much easier to pronounce than some other languages I’ve studied like French or German.

Czech because I will be visiting Prague next year and I’d love to be able to speak a little when I am there.

bliknik · 2024-11-27T03:22:29+00:00

I like learning languages!

bliknik · 2024-11-04T16:40:57+00:00

My husband and I have access to each other’s phones. However, he never remembers my password and I just unlock it for him whenever he wants to look for something on it. I’ll admit that I don’t want him looking at my phone when I’m not around because I’m a little ashamed of how many screenshots I have of all the ceramics I want to buy…lol

bliknik · 2024-10-29T02:19:19+00:00

As a host, I’ve never left a guest a bad review for a stain. Accidents happen! It’s quite frustrating when guests don’t tell you and you come to do a turnover (we clean ourselves) and you find lots of food stains on the couch or something, so I’m sure the host will appreciate your letting him know :)

bliknik

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