Thank you guys for talking sense into me. I didn’t buy them food today and I came home to all the lights on (living room, kitchen, bathroom) and them asleep. Then they helped themselves to the Icelandic bottled water that I keep on the side of the fridge THAT I DRINK DIRECTLY OUT OF. I guess they don’t know what a Brita filter pitcher is. (I say in my welcome letter, “help yourself to the Brita water in the fridge.”) Sigh. My new policy is to make sure guests understand English. I’m scared for what tomorrow morning will bring!
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Geeze,these guys are clueless. When do they check out again?
[cue countdown timer]
Tomorrow Monday 10 am is check out time. I’ve never been more eager to enforce that time! Usually I’m relaxed about guests leaving luggage.
This is a photo just for laughs of the result of her cooking those 2 eggs. Not sure what that white splotch is or how she managed to spill salt EVERYWHERE, but this is exactly why I restrict kitchen use. My stove is normally pristine!
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I’m glad you didn’t buy them more food, that’s reinforcing the undesirable behavior. I had Italian guests who thought my private ensuite room was a self contained apartment. They were nice and left a 5 star review but said I needed to make it clearer that there was no kitchen in the room. Really what was needed was a better ability to read a listing in English when traveling in the US. Let us know what kind of review you get.
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I’ll definitely update once I get a review from them. They just left a few minutes ago, 35 minutes past check out time. I’m saying my goodbyes to them and they say “Well we’re not sure what to do right now. Our plane to Costa Rica leaves at 6pm.” Mind you, last night, I asked them “Tomorrow morning, 10 am checkout, no problem?” And they said “no problem!” enthusiastically. So I just didn’t offer any solutions to their current luggage problem. I think they are just clueless travelers! The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am. They could have easily copy and pasted my listing in Google translate but they really didn’t care to learn about my home and how I live here. I bet they didn’t realize this was not an entire apt rental but a private room!
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Uh oh…someone in Costa Rica is about to have their fridge rummaged through.
I can hear them now “Oh but we stayed in many Airbnbs in the United States and they all served us a huge breakfast…it was the same in all of Europe too.”
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Yeah and now they don’t speak any Spanish …
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NO…
Don’t ask them… TELL THEM. Check out time is 10am. Sorry, I cannot accommodate late check out and ask that you respect the time as I need to turn the room over for the next set of guests the same day, thank you.
When I teach primary school, I don’t “ask” the kids if it is time to do math. I TELL them. What do you think would happen if I asked for student approval all day? 
Guests are the same. Be firm and you won’t have this kind of thing happen in the future.
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The cheese and cold cuts thing is more German and northern Europeans. Italians will enjoy some brioche or a plain croissant with jam. Southern Europeans are also okay about UHT milk because of the climate they don’t get fresh milk daily. And they (usually) don’t drink coffee with milk! Since you probably don’t have a coffee machine I would point them in the direction of the nearest place that serves great coffee. Explain that it costs the same to drink sitting down so they can eat as well. In a lot of Italian tourist places locals drink their morning espresso standing up and pay a lower price than tourists sitting down. Sounds like you are trying to make their first American experience great but they also need (and probably want) to be learn to act like the locals which, in Brooklyn, I am guessing means going out for breakfast.
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I have a motto: Never reward bad behavior. And I see people on this forum site with a bit of passive aggressive behavior going on where you back down and not abide by the rules you expect from your guests,and then get mad later and place the guests in a bad light. You can’t have it both ways!
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Hello!
I’m Italian and no, it’s not Italian culture to put hands into other people’s fridge (or belongings). I mean, if we are very close friends, I don’t mind if you open the fridge and serve yourself a glass of water or anything, but we have to be very close friends 
I haven’t been hosting for a long time, and I rent a whole apartment, so guests can do what they wish in the kitchen (more or less).
I don’t give a stocked kitchen, I only give tableware and stuff, and I try to offer a fresh bottle of water in the fridge and some snacks, so if you just arrive from a long (and hot) journey, you can relax a bit before looking for a supermarket.
I’ve been a guest many times, and since I love having breakfast at home, I ask in advance if I can use kitchen (usually, when I travel, I only have breakfast at home, but I don’t cook, I eat a yogurt and some fruits; I have lunch and supper outside). Most hosts stated in their ads the room had a kitchen available, and they showed me what I could use (take some food? put my food in a special place in the fridge?).
Most Italians for breakfast just go in a bar and drink an espresso and eat a croissant, but I don’t like coffee, so I do really love having my breakfast at home.
@lhsu718 are your guests a middle aged couple?
Because when I travel I see many middle aged Italian couples who “don’t have any idea” (i.e. like they never put their nose out of their house before") and sometimes they expect strange things (i.e. they go abroad and try to speak Italian to other people; or they get off at the airport and they have no idea on how to reach the place they rented, and so on).
well, I guess they were just unpolite, because it’s not “typical Italian” taking stuff from other people’s fridge without permission, or leaving all lights on (in Italy electricity is expensive, so everybody is taking a lot of care about switching off ligths when not needed); and in Italy we DO know what is Brita water
About UHT milk…that’s not true! I don’t drink milk, but other people in my family would get mad if not getting their fresh milk for breakfast!
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Another thing…
I would think of “Brita bottle” as more private than a “mineral water bottle”, so unless somebody told me something different, I would drink from the mineral water bottle, but I guess you wrote it somewhere (and they didn’t read/understand)…
I specifically say “there is a Brita pitcher in the fridge with filtered water. Please help yourself!” Instead they went for a bottle that I had already had 1/5th of from the side of my fridge door.
OK I finally had time to do my reviews and here is what they wrote. (They wrote in Italian so I’ve included the translation.) BTW, they gave me 4 stars overall, but 5 stars in each category separately.
Public review: “Accoglienza cordiale della padrona. La casa in un quartiere tipico molto caratteristico”
“Warm welcome of the mistress . The house in a typical very characteristic district.”
What she loved: “Molto comodo il materasso, casa pulitissima, cane simpaticissimo, posizione comoda per raggiugere manatthan in tre fermate di metro, padrona gentile”
"Very comfortable mattress , the house immaculate , very nice dog, also convenient for Manatthan in three metro stops , friendly hostess "
What I can improve: “Mi sarebbe piaciuto fosse inclusa la colazione!”
“I would have liked it included breakfast !”
LOL that Tuft and Needle mattress is really paying off though. They (and many guests since) LOVED it and told me so in person.
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They were middle aged! But she is a tattoo artist so I thought they’d be “cool”. But they really weren’t at all. It seemed like she just recently (in the last 5 years) got into tattoos and went to school for it… I have lots of tattoo artist friends so I was looking forward to maybe introduce her to some people I know with tattoo shops in my neighborhood but obviously I didn’t bother haha…
LOL! I’m Italian from Venice, I prefer a whole apartment only for me but for breakfast only at least 2 or 3 cups of Italian Espresso just to open one eye :-))
I think that B&B is a misleading expression, for the & between Bed and Breakfast but I cant’ stop laughing in reading your post :-DDD
Ciao!!
Claudia
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I can not understand guests that give 5 stars to all except Overall experience. It often happens and it’s completely arbitrary.
In Rome, for instance, guests of my friends (hosts) wrote that the Overall experience 4 was for crowded buses… in other cases it was raining, weather too hot/cold. And in lot of cases they think to give 5 stars only to 5 stars hotels.
A logical mistery in human intelligence (if present),
My personal record is a 4 in Location (at 50 meters to Piazza San Marco, with a panoramic view of the bell tower of the place and scuptures of Museo Correr, in the street of luxury shops as Bulgari, Fendi, Zegna, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Loro Piana, Hermès, Tiffany, Versace and so on.)
Then what can we expect, the rest of us, If piazza San Marco location gets 4*:)??
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Have you ever been on an Air Italia flight? OMG. All assholes and elbows as my friend used to say. Hugely fun people but pushy beyond belief when it comes to queuing up for anything.