Turnip Houseboat on Lake Union

Awesome place! Very cute. Accurately described in the renter profile.

Everything was great. It was a unique stay for our first night in Seattle!

Staying aboard the Turnip Houseboat made our trip to Seattle complete. The Turnip is a quaint little boat with lots of charm and a very comfortable bed. It is conveniently located on the bus route (#40) which will take you Downtown or to Ballard and Fremont. It's centrally located in Westlake so that makes it within walking distance to many restaurant and neighborhoods. Seattle is a walkable city so we enjoyed our walks about town from this area, but a Lyft or an Uber will also take you want to go in town for little money. I would stay aboard the Turnip again. Be conservative with water and follow the rules about using the Marina bathroom when possible. This is normal houseboat living and the water lasted us just about right for our two day stay. We very much enjoyed our time on the Turnip and highly recommend it.

I will start with the good, most of which is evident in the pictures:

First off, its a house boat, a very Unique one, that alone is worth 2 stars. It also is in a pretty good location that is walk-able and did i mention its a house boat! aka on a lake! In addition to that you can watch the sea planes take off all day (never gets old) and use the kayaks to explore the lake. A very unique and fun experience.

We found the bed to be moderately comfortable and the houseboat itself to be reasonably spacious (larger than your typical cruise stateroom)

Also the marina was pretty quiet and felt very safe.

Now for the bad:

We did not receive the check-in information until 4 hours prior to checking in (This took 3 VRBO messages and a phone call over a weeks period of time)

Wouldn't have been a big deal if I wasn't on the other side of the country wondering where I was going to sleep for the second half of my vacation.

Also the check-in procedure/ boat instructions was 8 pages, so accessing the boat was a bit more confusing than it would have been if I had time to review the documentation prior.

Additionally for this type of rental it would be very beneficial to have someone great you upon your arrival and give you some in-person directions, this would have made the world of a difference in this situation.

My biggest complaint/suprise about the turnip was the lack of curtains. I read the previous reviews of lack of privacy but I took this as outdoor privacy. Well there is no privacy indoors either. Not even if you want to shower or change. Only half of the windows have curtains which are a pathetic example of curtains at that. All the ambient city lights and the lack of curtains made sleeping difficult. This is an easy fix that would have made the stay much more pleasant.

The other large complaint is the toilet, with that said I went in expecting the toilet to be an issue, however it was far worse than expected. Forget #2 this toilet couldn't even handle #1. Thankfully we found the marina bathroom after searching all over for it. To be honest I do not understand why this cannot be fixed. Even if it means moving the toilet to the space across from the shower (this would allow for the toilet to drop directly into the holding tank avoiding issues with the pump)

Lastly, it appears the large window with the locking issue near the bed was corrected by making the window in-operable. This made it difficult to cool the boat down on a hot day.

It is a cute little boat, with a big window that opens out adjacent to the bed. Wonderful water movement rocking you to sleep. A unique experience. On the down side, there were toilet issues that required us to call for assistance (2 times in 3 days). The wonderful big window did not have a functional lock (and the instructions on the boat ask that you leave boat locked with the windows closed). There were several lights not working, some did not have bulbs, so that during dark hours there was no light in the toilet area, and the one in the kitchen was on the opposite side of the room, so what ever you worked on had your shadow cast on your work (frustrating).

I would have liked a location with some shops or activity near by. The deli at the business area is closed on weekends. We made use of uber every time we went out.