We’ve just returned from a week at this villa. Our group was me and my fiancé, my parents and my sister, who was with us for half of the stay. I wouldn’t recommend this villa for a multitude of reasons listed below:
The pros
- the pool is big and the area around is spacious and very scenic
- It’s close to Taormina and other little Sicilian towns that are wonderful
- It’s tidy enough
I’m afraid that’s where the pros end. The cons are many:
- the main issue, the air conditioning in one of the bedrooms doesn’t work, we asked after the first night if someone could have a look and although the owner came out to check, they couldn’t fix it and it reminded unfixed for the remainder of the holiday despite many, many pleas. For brits in the Sicilian heat, Air con is a must, my parents didn’t sleep and it put a real dampener on the holiday.
- The lights around the pool and the bbq area either don’t work, or the switches are in the most ridiculous places that we couldn’t find; we asked where they were and were directed to lights for the drive ways. It means you can’t sit outside by the pool or the big table past 8.30pm. We planned to bbq but my dad couldn’t actually see anything. We are out 6/7 nights.
- The keys to the gate are constantly stuck so you have to either spend 15 minutes plus jimmying it, in the hope it works (not always) or leave the gate open.
- The showers run hot and cold and are very unreliable.
- Generally it’s nowhere near as nice and spacious as it looks on the photos, but that might just be me.
- The small bedroom with a pull out for one person doesn’t have air con at all (we were charged €80 for this room, which we agreed to pay, leading to my next point)
- The host is very unprofessional. We forgot about the €80 by the end of the holiday as we were leaving at 8am on our last day and hadn’t been asked for it. As we were leaving we were chased down and asked for it. I said we didn’t have euros on us because we were heading to the airport and i had forgotten, in any case i didn’t think we should pay it considering the air conditioning and that I would, however, speak to the host through airbnb as the lady at the house didn’t speak a word of English and we were trying to get to the airport.
- I then received what can only be described as a barrage of WhatsApp messages accusing us of ripping them off, stealing a pillow (we didn’t), leaving the house a mess (we emptied everything, stripped the beds, did all the dishes. I have no idea what more we could have done.
- this barrage has continued hours after I stopped replying.
I can’t warn you off this place enough. I understand that there is rustic charm but this is another level. DO NOT stay here.