Villa Arenella is a tricky place to write a review for - the location is perfect, less than 1 hour by car from Catania airport and 3 minutes walk from a lovely beach. The villa itself and the garden are beautiful, with a big swimming pool and an outside barbecue space. The Villa is spacious and separated into two floors, each with their own bathroom and kitchen, so with two families each family can have their own privacy whilst also enjoying the outside space together. However the inside of the villa needs modernisation, with a broken shower cabin in the downstairs bathroom and a toilet seat that doesn’t stay up. The kitchen is relatively well equipped but it seems to contain bits and pieces left over from other houses so there are packets of straws and wooden skewers but we couldn’t find any chopping boards. The furniture and especially the beds could be better. The inside of the house was clean, but inside the cupboards and the terrace outside were not. The swimming pool is very deep and is not protected, we were ok as our son does not walk yet but for children who can walk but are not confident swimmers this could be a problem.
We discussed some of these issues with the host who said that due to the fact that they had not had many guests this year, some smaller problems that would had been caught by previous guests and resolved had not been seen.
We had an issue during check-in that meant we had a very stressful wait outside the villa late at night with our young son, until someone was able to meet us with the keys. Luckily the neighbours were incredibly helpful and made sure our son was ok whilst we tried to contact the host. We also had a problem with the keys later in the week, likely due to previous guests switching keys on the two key-rings provided.
After a tricky start for our check-in, Paolo was on hand throughout the week to maintain the pool, help us out with the keys and provide some information on local shops.
Paolo told me that they are planning to do some work in the villa this autumn. With a little bit of renovation the villa could be a perfect place to stay.