Karoti House
Positive:
Crete is beautiful.
The house looked inside as described. Good rooms, but the house is not suited for tall people.
The caretaker and cleaning lady were nice and helpful.
Negative:
We rented the house for 2 weeks. We received a contract from Airbnb that stated it was house no 2. Just before we left for Crete, Fani changed this to house no 3. That turned out to be a significant change – to the worse. In house no 3, there is zero (0) privacy outdoor, nor indoor to some extent. Also, because there is no shelter to either side of house no 2, it worked as a wind tunnel, and the parasol and drying rack constantly fall onto the ground and were of no use when there was just a little bit of wind.
We had a large group of Italians with children in house no 2, a French couple with a dog in house no 4, who sat staring at us in their glass veranda, when we are home at the same time. Furthermore, in house no 5 a family moved into the apartment on the first floor with a direct view to our terrace and garden – and they spent quite some time doing so, also from their roof terrace. This meant that we spent as little time as possible at the house since you want to be outdoors in this climate.
Both house no 2 and 4 had at least privacy from one side that was separated from the neighbor by a wall. What was also unpleasant was that we could not avoid looking into the other houses’ gardens and terraces, which made it impossible to relax when we were outdoors and they were home. We could in fact look nowhere with neighbors to both sides.
The guests in house no 2 used all of their garden (of course, they did) and could look into our living room, meaning that we had to retire into the back of the house towards the kitchen to be private.
The view from our house was a hedge and a collection of electricity poles (need I say that from house no 2 you could look onto the sea and the mountains…) and even from the roof terrace at the pool, the view was partly covered by a building in front of our terrace. No nice photos of sunsets from our terrace. The photos in the Airbnb ad are in no way what we experienced.
We had read in other people’s reviews how they were offered cleaning a couple of times, but Fani made it sound as if the once we got a light cleaning of our house, was a special service to us. When we arrived, there was tabs for the dishwasher – for 1 week, and the same for the washing machine. When we asked for tabs for the second week, we were told to go shopping in the supermarket. Not what you would expect from a rather expensive rental. We did not exactly get a discount for 2 weeks.
And, I am not complaining about other guests. You cannot really blame them for looking at us as it was difficult to avoid.
Overall, a negative experience – and if you do rent from Fani, make sure NOT to get house no 3.
With respect to communication, it was fine at the beginning when we wanted to rent, but afterwards it could take a couple of days before she responded. My last comment to her about my son’s missing cross, she has not even replied to.