The villa is in a lovely location.
A short drive to the city of Heraklion but you are away from the noise.
The villa has really beautiful views, it was very clean throughout had a nice big bed.
Fully equipped kitchen.
We booked this villa as it was advertised as having a wood burning fire and a hot tub, both things we were very much looking forward to using.
upon check in we were told that the "hot" tub only gets to 25 degrees, which is not nearly hot enough to relax in and enjoy in the evenings, especially as it is now in the cooler months.
we asked twice, saying "really it only gets that warm"
and we were told by Michalis, yes, 25 degrees.
We were guided through the house and shown the bedroom bathroom, kitchen, we saw the wood burning fire and were looking forward to using that, we were instructed that no we were not to use it but could use the outdoor wood burning barbecue!
We were very disappointed with this as it was also one of the main reasons we chose this villa.
From here the disappointment continues....
The television with Netflix etc had only 1 channel available, my husband called the owner and in our limited German speaking he followed the instructions to turn everything on and get the channels working, nothing happened, just kein signal kept coming up. So the owners husband come over to look at it, after 20 minutes of him pushing buttons etc he had no luck either, threw his hands in the air and said Kaput! He did bring a HDMI cable so we could view things via our laptop but the TV should really be tuned in correctly for guests.
On two occasions, one which was late at night we had difficulty getting the front door to unlock as the strike was not turning out correctly, it's frustrating when it is the only door you can access the inside of the property.
we eventually were able to get it opened but it should not be so difficult to open. We called Michalis about this and he gave us confusing instructions on how to open the door, should be a basic thing to get right but not at this place.
On the day of check out we left the property in a very clean state and respectfully tidy.
Aristea the owner come to get the keys off us at check out and asked us in a gruff manner what the problem with the door was, we told her and she went outside and managed to get in quicker than we did with the lock but also said you needed to jerk the door hard towards you to open it,
not really ideal and we were not told this at the time of check in.
we then expressed our disappointment with the temperature of the "Hot tub" and that we did not use it as it was too cold.
We also expressed our disappointment in not being able to use the wood fire, her response was that we could have used it, when we explained that Michalis said no we weren't allowed too she back pedaled and said that the wood they had to burn was too green, hmm but we were allowed to burn the same wood in the outdoor barbecue. very confusing, very conflicting information given.
We discussed that we felt the facilities were not as advertised and that they should offer some money back to us as we were not able to use the advertised facilities that we wanted to.
This obviously did not go down well with them.
There was continual conflicting information given to us from the person who owns the villa and her Son who manages the property.
Apparently the hot tub does get hotter but it needs to be left on for 6-7 hours! why is this information not communicated to guests? Why is there no compendium explaining that it needs to be on for a long time prior to getting to a hotter temperature of 35 degrees, why was it not already on and warm for the guests arrival!
We said goodbye and left, very dissatisfied with the attitude of the owner.
Two hours after our departure my husband has two missed calls on his phone.
He called the number back to find that it was the local police, the officer he spoke to began to interrogate him in regards to us staying at the villa, where he was at that moment, what flights he was booked on, and insisted he write down some other telephone number to call, we assume it was the owner he was supposed to call. The police officer said, you spoke bad to the woman,
NO, we spoke civilly and did not use bad language or be aggressive towards her.
She obviously wanted to intimidate us through the police as I said to her I will not be leaving a 100% positive review.
it is disgraceful behavior that my husband was harassed by the local police over false claims and truth be told, I did most of the talking not my husband, so obviously lies were told to the police!
There was a language barrier to a degree as the owner spoke very little English and mainly spoke German, we can speak a bit of German and understand more than we can communicate back.
An unfortunate experience to what was meant to be a romantic birthday getaway.