Un' Altalena sul Mare - Accesso diretto in spiaggia

Great location on the sea side and a wonderful backyard. Originally decorated rooms, fully equipped kitchen.

The shower needs some maintenance. And the cat which stole my lunch from the barbeque area - but that's probably more of my fault :)

The location at the ocean and the beach! We loved the terrace and spent many hours reading, eating and enjoying the views. The owner, Luciano, is super friendly and helpful. The kids loved the cats and the chickens.

Nothing. A dishwasher would have been nice but we managed without it :)

Luciano and his family are great people, always ready to help and assist with any problem. The villa has a great view and private direct access to the rocky beach.

I would recommend to add an electric kettle in the kitchen for quicker tea/coffee preparation. Restaurants and shops are quite far from the villa for a walking distance, better to use a car.

We rented the house for 2 weeks in August/September and looked forward to our stay after a long drive. While there’s certainly positive points to highlight, we were surprised in hindsight at the abundance of 5 star / 10 points reviews. We have travelled extensively and are used to different levels of accommodation, and for us a 5 star review is just not realistic as for that a high standard of amenities would be expected as well as a high quality of the condition of the rental property. We’ve carefully reflected on our experience and believe a 2.5 - 3 star review is appropriate. Positives: • Luciano is a friendly and helpful host. • Mediterranean literally is a few steps walking distance from the house (with a great view from the terrace) and the water is clean and crystal clear (we do recommend bringing along rubber diving shoes for getting in/out of the water as the rocks can get very slippery and painful for bare feet). • The town is very much a ‘local’ place with very few (non-Italian) tourists. This is reflected in the modest facilities nearby (e.g. restaurants) but we appreciated that because we came here to relax. • Places like Gallipoli, Lecce, Otranto are all a relatively short drive away. • Private parking space (with roof to avoid the car overheating) was a real positive.

Requires improvement • The overall condition of the house (and surrounding area) is rather ‘run down’ (in particular the mosquito covers in front of the windows/door downstairs require immediate replacement or fixing). It felt like the entire property and furniture was from the 1970's (?) and had never been replaced since then. • It can get very hot downstairs (kitchen / living room) and we suggest that installing an airco there makes sense (the airco in the 2 bedrooms on the 2nd floor is great). Being downstairs was not comfortable unless the door/windows were open all night/day but then mosquitos and other bugs became an annoyance (see our prior point). Put differently: we spent as little time downstairs as possible. • The house has an in-house wifi but the connection was poor to non-existent some of the time. Sitting outside and hotspotting over the phone worked fine but that’s inconvenient in the evening (unless you don’t mind mosquito bites). Due to the walls of the house being fairly thick, hotspotting over the phone inside the house didn’t really work. This all may be a non-issue for many people, but if you rely on a solid and speedy internet connection this can be rather frustrating (we do not recommend coming here if you intend to ‘work from home’ during your stay). We enjoyed our stay but felt that the price vs. quality balance wasn’t right, despite the clear attraction of having the ocean right in front of the house, due to the condition of the house being insufficient, hence 2.5-3 stars max in current condition. Renting the place is probably best suited for those intending to spend very little time in the house itself. Downstairs is dark and with bugs so we'd go upstairs as soon as the mosquitos would appear outside. In the end, we never fully felt comfortable in the property and for the price being asked this is not what you expect.