My daughter and I flew from different U.S. cities and met in Catania. We don't speak Italian. We phoned Alessio from the airport, rented a car and were greeted at the apartment by Franco and Alessandro. They showed us how to do everything we needed to know and answered our vast number of questions. Franco even taught me how to make Espresso. They made us feel welcome and comfortable. If you choose to stay in this apartment, you will have the experience of living a typical Catania lifestyle. The kitchen had all we needed for breakfast, even the coffee was provided. The grocery store is just down the street on the same block. There is an excellent bakery up the street the other way as well as cafes. We didn't cook too many meals there as we were out each day exploring Sicily. We parked our rental car on the right side of the street each night for free. You just have to be a really good at parallel parking and learn exactly where parking is allowed. The apartment is quite large with 3 bedrooms. We only used two of the bedrooms and each bedroom had its own bathroom which was great. I chose the bedroom upstairs which has narrow, steep stairs leading to it. My bedroom overlooked the courtyard and the other one overlooked the street. The street is a very busy one with lots of traffic. If you are a city dweller you will feel right at home. My daughter lives in D.C., so she was fine with this. There is no central heating and cooling. We were there for 2 1/2 weeks over Thanksgiving and towards the end we felt a little cool but still we did not use the space heater. I don't know how hot Catania gets in the summer. The apartment was clean and beds were comfortable. After one week Alessandro cleaned the apartment and changed the sheets and towels. Alessio answered all of my e-mails very quickly. The apartment had WiFi which was very important to us as we didn't have a data plan for Italy. The location of this apartment is walking distance to downtown Catania with all of its good restaurants, markets and amazing historical sites. We also found it easy to access the A18 highway to get to Taormina and the north side of Etna. My son was stationed on the U.S. naval base in Sigonella and we found it to be 20-30 minutes to get there depending on traffic. We also found Siracusa and Noto to be only about 1 1/2 hours away. And of course Mt. Etna is very close. The airport is 20 minutes away. We enjoyed staying in this apartment.