I spent a delightful month here—so delightful I decided to add on another two weeks because I couldn’t quite bear to leave. From her quick replies to my pre-booking and pre-arrival questions to her kind suggestions and invitations during my stay and her rapid approval of my extension request, Sossi was a brilliant host, and her daughter stepped in to help with everything I needed when Sossi was away.
The neighbourhood is expensive, beautiful, quiet, and safe. I was glad I’d rented a nice car so it didn’t look massively out of place! The property is at the end of a no outlet street, and parking was always easy on the street just above the steep driveway.
The pool area has recently had a full remodel and was a wonderful place to spend many hours lounging, working (e.g. in the shaded “pod” couch), and swimming, with views of the nearby tree-lined hillside to the west, across to the Rafael Hills to the east, and right over to the San Gabriel mountains in the northeast. There’s sun on the terrace until about 6 pm before it drops behind the hill.
If you’re into hiking, it’s a perfect spot. It’s five minutes on foot to the Beaudry Motorway trailhead from which you have access to the entire Verdugo Hills area, and there are also smaller steeper trails from the streets above the property. All the other Verdugo trailheads are 10-20 minutes’ drive, and it’s also only about 10 minutes by car to the start of the Angeles Crest Highway, from which the entire San Gabriels range is within reach.
The accommodation itself is very comfortable and extremely well equipped (I needn’t even have brought my hair straighteners!), including with a kettle and K-cup coffee machine. There’s masses of storage space, and the kitchen area is small but all works very well, with the only downsides being lack of freezer and a 2-ring stove that’s slow to heat up and never gets particularly hot. The shower is good; the coffee table has a great folding design that transforms it into a perfect desk; and the wifi was impeccable throughout my 6 weeks. If you have the door open, you can even see a nice bit of sky and palm trees. The four small dogs are cute but fairly noisy, though they gradually got used to me over the course of my stay. Finally, note that the air conditioning isn’t controllable by the guest (it’s one system for the whole house), but it wasn’t needed while I was there (late April to early June); the room is well insulated and the temperature stayed very stable even on hot days.
Beware, this place is very hard to leave!