Vacances de la Toussaint, Part 5: Marseille (Or Airbnb Fleas)

It was cheaper for Sarah to leave from Marseille to go back up north, so we decided to spend a day and a night in Marseille before she left. We booked an Airbnb for one night using the instant booking feature, so we weren’t able to message with the host before booking but the listing had a lot of good reviews so it seemed safe. When the host replied he told us that he was away for the weekend, but that we could pick up the keys from his friend.

We arrived in Marseille around noon and first went to the friend’s house to pick up the key to the Airbnb. She was extremely nice, gave us the keys and Wifi password, and told us to call her if we had any problems, since the host might be hard to reach. Since the Airbnb was not very close to the city center, we decided to get lunch and spend the afternoon sight-seeing and then go to the Airbnb before dinner. We had lunch in a small square near where we picked up the key, in the part of the city called Le Panier, the oldest part of the city that was originally a Greek colony. We then walked by the cathedral, which is huge.

Next we went to the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, where we learned about the history of agriculture, farming, water/wells, wine making, etc. From the museum we were able to walk across to one of the forts flanking the entrance to the harbor. We had good views of the cathedral, the harbor, some mountains, and the basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde at the highest point of the city.

By the time we left the fort it was already after 4:30 so we didn’t have time to climb all the way up the (large) hill to the basilica. Instead we took the little tourist train, which took us around the city and then up the hill to see the basilica. The timing was perfect and we got to watch a beautiful sunset from the top of the hill before taking one of the last trains back down to the harbor.

At this point it was about 6:00 and we thought our day was just about done. We would go pick up Sarah’s suitcase from the train station locker, drop our stuff off at the Airbnb, and then grab a quick dinner and get to bed early because Sarah had an early train the next morning. Little did we know that there was much more in store…

We walked to the Airbnb (about 30 minutes away from the harbor area). When we arrived, we looked around quickly, set our belongings in the bedroom, and sat on the couch to connect to Wifi and look at restaurant options nearby. I was wearing capri-length leggings and as we were sitting on the couch I kept thinking I felt something tickling my legs and I kept trying to brush it away. Then when I looked down, there were three little black specks on my leg. What was that?? I quickly brushed it away and didn’t see anything else, so I kept looking for restaurants on my phone while keeping one eye on my legs. There they were again! I instinctively brushed them away before I had a chance to see what they were. I said to Sarah “I think there are little black bugs on my legs!” She looked over, but they weren’t there anymore. I looked on the couch and on the floor but I didn’t see any. Every once in a while I would feel them on my legs again. Once I tried to grab one in my fingers to get a better look at it but it seemed to jump away. Another time I tried to squish one between my fingers but it didn’t squish and jumped away. At this point I googled “fleas.” 

“Sarah…I think they are fleas…” 

She still hadn’t seen any of them and I think she didn’t really believe me. I went upstairs to see if there were any up there and I did find one on the floor in the bedroom. I called Sarah up to show her but since she had only seen the one she still didn’t seem too concerned. She went back down to the couch to keep looking at restaurants and I stood upstairs trying to figure out what to do. Then I heard her start coming back up the stairs. Some had jumped on her so now she believed me and agreed that we couldn’t stay there. 

We contacted the Airbnb host to inform him of the problem, ask if he knew of any cheap hotels nearby, and ask for a refund. Since we didn’t know how soon the host would reply and it was getting late, we gathered our belongings, left the apartment, and called the host’s friend to see if she had any ideas of hotels or hostels in the area (she had insisted we call her if we had the slightest problem, so we figured this counted). When we explained the situation to her she was very concerned and said she would look up hotels and call us back. She called back a few minutes later and said we could stay with her for the night because she couldn’t have us staying somewhere with fleas. We didn’t want to be an imposition, but she insisted we come stay with her, since it was just for one night. 

It was almost 10 pm at this point and we hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so we headed back toward her house and looked for a restaurant. Almost everything was closed and one place we found told us that they were all out of food. We ended up eating back at the same restaurant where we had lunch and hoped the waiters wouldn’t recognize us.  The host finally replied while we were eating and instead of being apologetic as one would expect, he was rude and accusatory. He then forbade us from staying with his friend and accused us of asking to stay with her. When we tried calling her after dinner, she never answered the phone, so we found ourselves without a place to stay at 10:30 pm. Fortunately, we found a cheap hostel with 2 open beds at 11 pm so we were able to stay somewhere without fleas for the night. We were in a room with 16 beds, but it was surprisingly quiet and we didn’t have any issues. I started the process of reporting the incident to Airbnb, but it was difficult to figure out on the mobile app and I could only seem to access a message system with automated responses that was not helpful.

The next morning Sarah left early to get her train and I was going to leave in the afternoon so that I could spend the morning exploring the city some more. I had breakfast at the hostel and was trying to look up information about what to see, but my phone was being very slow so I decided to restart it. As soon as I had turned it off, I remembered that with my French SIM card, if I turn the phone off and back on I need to enter a PIN for the SIM card. I had completely forgotten and didn’t have this PIN with me. The person sitting next to me at breakfast was using his computer and had a smart phone sitting next to it on the table. He kindly let me use his phone to log into my Facebook messenger account to try to contact my apartment mates and see if either of them were home and could go in my room and find my PIN to relay to me. Neither responded for a while and then finally one of them replied that she was home and had just gotten up. She was able to find my PIN so I was able to get back into my phone after about 40 minutes.

After this short delay, I went back to the Airbnb to return the key in the host’s mailbox. Then I walked around the city some and ended up at some sort of a mall in an interesting building and then another mall across the street with a view of the water and some big boats. Then I went back to the train station to head home. On the train I continued to try to work on the Airbnb situation. The host was never apologetic or helpful. He accused us of ignoring his phone calls on purpose (he only called a few times, when we happened to be eating or still sleeping in the morning, and never left a message). He refused to issue a refund even though the circumstances fit within Airbnb's refund policy. He also had the nerve to accuse me of behaving against the spirit of Airbnb. He got upset for some reason that I had his keys overnight, which made no sense. Of course I was going to hold onto the keys in case we didn’t find anywhere else to stay—sleeping with fleas is better than on the street with rats! If you’re going to rent out your apartment to people, of course that means that they will have your keys and take them around where they go… I told him that I would only communicate with him through the Airbnb messaging system from now on, because I wanted to make sure all of his rude messages were on record for Airbnb to see. As I was trying to work through the Airbnb system to try to figure out how to get a refund, the train went through a tunnel and I lost service. Luckily this prompted the app to give me a message saying “Oops! Something went wrong.” and asked me to try again or call the following number. Finally I had a phone number I could try to call! As soon as I got off the train in Cannes I called the number and explained my problem and Airbnb customer support immediately issued a full refund.

Everything turned out fine in the end because we found somewhere to sleep that didn’t have fleas and I got a full refund, but it was quite an ordeal and kind of put a damper on the trip.