We stayed with a family of 5 in the Apulia Estate for the last week of July 2022, myself, my wife our sons and a girlfriend. The estate is roughly 10 car minutes from Alberobello, quite rural situated between farms. The estate consists of a main modern house and a group of of Trulli buildings which are a bit away from the main house.
The main house has open plan living and kitchen, a master bedroom and 2 further bedrooms which should be twins but when we arrived one was a single. There are 2 large well equipped bathrooms. The single beds are a bit different and look like field beds, not sure if this would be comfortable when used as a double bed.
Due to this setup the younger couple took the master bedroom in the main house and my wife and I resorted to a Trullo to have a double bed. The trullo is very nicely restored and tasteful. The bathroom is a bit dated, I was not able to use the shower due to limited height so used the bathroom in the 2nd Trullo which was really nicely refurbished with local stone and a good shower.
Everything was really clean with nice bed linen and plenty of towels; the rooms are tasteful decorated and in good state of maintenance.
The garden is lovely with lots of flowering plants, palm trees. There is a BBQ area with gas hob for outdoor cooking, outside table for breakfast and dining. The jacuzzi, big lounge bed and sunbeds are great as well as the hard surfaces around the pool which are not getting hot or slippery.
A couple of things let the property down
On the afternoon of arrival at the property the pool maintenance person arrived who then found a technical issue with the pool. He did some work with a skimmer net and left, shortly after an electrician arrived to fix the issue which turned out to be a fault with the pool circulation pump timer which he managed to repair. The pool was not properly cleaned and we expected the maintenance man to return to finish his work. We communicated with the owner Rosella who is helpful but insisted that the maintenance man had finished his weekly cleaning routine. Obviously, we wanted to use the pool so ended up cleaning ourselves. The skimmer baskets contained for at least a week worth of debris (insects & leaves). The owner had the maintenance man coming back again next day as goodwill gesture. We still have our doubts about the cleaning process. Situations like this this need to be avoided at all cost and should not even be a discussion as the pool is one of the main features of the villa. We have rented many villa’s and pool maintenance is normally much more frequent, even daily in some cases. We asked the owner to review her pool maintenance arrangements.
The property is rural with farms around which come with:
-	Internet/broadband is very limited, streaming not possible
-	Flies, unavoidable with the farms but quite annoying. We resorted going to the beach to get away from the bugs.
-	Wasps, we found 2 types of which one is really relaxed and only come drinking from the pool. The other is more aggressive and attracted by food which is not ideal eating outside, we suspect there was a nest in one of the conifer trees.
-	Dogs, farm dogs are quite territorial and come over to the property to bark at you. My wife was chased by a pack of 3 one evening whilst walking (running) back to the house from our Trullo.
-	Farmers start early so expect activity from very early morning till late evening. The farmer next door was restoring an ancient wall in our week there which he would start around 5am!
We had a good week with the family in Puglia but are not planning to go back to something this rural. We may just have been a bit unlucky with a couple of things.