Excellent views, private parking and immediate access to the beach and village center of Bidart a few hundred meters away. The description is all accurate. Some improvements we’d suggest: check in was not smooth with the local person. Some confusion in understanding each other despite speaking in French! She was expecting us to be there at 15:00 because we HAD NOT informed her yet of our arrival time. Usually, when you check in, the idea is that you let the contact person know what time you will arrive. As we were arriving from Spain and sightseeing, we didn’t have a precise time yet knowing that check in wouldn’t happen before 15:00 according to the listing. She however expected that we would be there at 3. Then, when we agreed to meet between 5-5:30, i finally called her at 5:45 to find out that she was waiting in her apartment in the same building. We were hanging out for 45 minutes with a loaded vehicle practically blocking the road waiting for her to meet us there. There was never a time when she said she lived on-site and that we should call when we drive and she would come down and meet us (especially as where you arrive is NOT the building’s entrance or where you technically unload. Such confusion for no reason.
Next, only 1 set of keys is handed over to a family which is very limiting. !! You can’t split up and each have his own plan, so 2 sets of keys are standard from what El we’ve seen with previous rentals when you have more than a couple. We also then found out that the guardienne/the woman we met to check in hands over her ONLY set of keys to this flat..!! This is a big improvement suggestion that can be easily implemented!! This latter issue was very relevant and important because despite all of our humble best efforts the dishwasher is very very old, and never worked! We ran it according to the guardienne’s recommendations about 4 times and it finally smelled badly and Bert cleaned 1 single dish or fork.
We had suggested to the guardienne to call a Technician but given we had the ONLY set of keys, this was impossible. !! This became a huge headache and let down for us, not to mention the extra work, as the dishwasher on vacation was another reason why we booked this ocean-facing apartment. It’s part of the basics that if it’s listed it should be reliably functional and at this rate in August definitely so!
The other issue was that also the Magimix Nespresso machine apparently needed decalcing because it continuously leaked clean water whenever we tried to use it. We gave up after a couple attempts for coffee. Thankfully, we had brought along our own French press.
All in all, we loved the area and the possibility to store our bikes in the common garage on the ground level.