4/10 – Matig
Jim J.
8 sep 2019
Negatief: Netheid
Mixed feelings. Property has potential but terrible management and too many mosquitoes.
The house had not been cleaned when we arrived and was in a disgusting smelly condition. Apparently the cleaners van had broken down. When they arrived they told us they had already done ten properties that day. Given what we paid for cleaning costs I would expect it to take a team of 3 cleaners at least 2 to 3 hours to do a thorough clean. They spent maybe an hour. In the end we gave the kitchen a proper clean ourselves. This is an issue with the management firm (Fabkeys and Novasol) not the property itself, but it got our holiday off to a really bad start. We then found that they did not make one of the beds so we had to call them back in, and we found that one of the shower drains was blocked but just cleared it ourselves. There was broken glass on the patio which we told the cleaners about but they did not clean it properly so again we had to sort it out ourselves. The crockery and cutlery was all a bit dirty so we had to clean it all before using. Later in the week the pool turned green and the owner had to be called to send someone round to treat it.
So, the management of the property was terrible, but what about the house and garden. The garden was the real star. Walled all the way round, a big lawn for playing on and a pool big enough for our party of ten, it was great for hanging out in. One big warning though - the mosquitoes were relentless. I had over 100 bites by the end of the week and had actually stopped hanging out in the garden unless I was wearing long trousers. We used citronella candles but they had little effect.
The house itself was adequate. More seating in the living room would have been useful and each room should have a fan since the nights were so hot. The beds were comfortable, the pillows were small.
The beach is just five minutes walk from the house. We really enjoyed going to the rocky beaches around Antibes and L'Aiguille for snorkeling because there where so many fish to see. In general there is a lot of traffic in Cannes and parking places were sometimes hard to find.
One more complaint, on Monday morning at 8am the garden sprinklers came on, and with the pump being quite noisy, woke us all up. The next morning at a similar time a couple of gardeners came with all their machines. So hopes for having a relaxing lie in again evaporated. I accept that these things need to happen but we were not even told about them.
Jim J.
7 nachten verbleven in augustus 2019