Overall a great stay. Lots to do. Very clean and well provided-for (towels, sheets, all supplies). There were a handful of issues which arose, but the hosts were very available were immediately attentive. I gave 4 stars and not 5 only because any issues arose at all.
I think it’s important to point our stay was 2.5 weeks, rather than the usual few days others may stay, and we stayed around the house mainly, rather than go out on the town, so our experience would be different from most. Additionally, there was a few days when the weather was unusually colder than expected.
Cons: I was uncomfortable with being asked up front, prior to even arriving the property, to say to any neighbors who should ask that we were friends of friends instead of renters. Thankfully, it never came up, however.
We went to use the grill and found the tank empty. The host brought 1.5 tanks within 30 mins.
There was a broken light bulb above the bathroom vanity whose insides (wiring?) were exposed. John replaced that along with another one that was not lighting up (though the bulb was not broken and its insides were still encased).
We paid the extra fee for pool heating. We were shown how to heat it, but it was still colder than what we found comfortable for probably the first full week. The host gave us additional instructions for heating which made it better.
The thermostat was our biggest issue. It’s technology we weren’t familiar with and seemed intuitive enough, but it had eco auto-settings to which it kept changing back unbeknownst to us until we were cold again. The host disabled these and we also finally figured out to set it either to “heat” or “cool” rather than set a range for it to work right. It took a few days and 2-3 mornings of waking up cold, but it got sorted out and we were comfortable.
We did find that the majority of the dishes, though had been clearly run thru the dishwasher, did need to be hand washed before we used them. We thought perhaps previous renters hadn’t rinsed the dishes well before putting them in the dishwasher?
Pros: so much fun stuff to do and keep entertained. The house is very spacious and comfortable. It did have two thermostats, so different family members could keep “their half” of the house at the temp they liked. The Nespresso machine was awesome and there were plenty of pods.
Suggestion (sorry, John, forgot to mention this in the note to you): there were a lot of towels, but it would’ve also been nice to have large beach/pool towels.
Overall, again a very nice experience. The issues above were all relatively minor and were addressed immediately. I very much appreciated the hosts being very responsive, kind, and professional.