Halvard Apartments at Castletown

Stunning setting, lovely decor and warm welcome at check in

Chain for window blind in bathroom difficult to reach

Every thing was first class

Great apartment, very clean and well kitted out. Perfect location with lots of places to eat and drink locally and easy access to the rest of the island.

The TV was very glitchy and on a couple of days, almost unwatchable.

I liked the location right in the middle of the old town, the concierge was pleasant enough (we didn't have a very long conversation), the WiFi and TV was good, communication with the landlord was good.

I needed an overnight stay to be close to a two-day music event, so I booked the apartment in the same town. After my first enquiry I got told that the apartment was not available before 15:00 on the day - but when I rang the doorbell at 14:30 (the weather was really bad, and I wanted to get in and unpack), the concierge opened immediately, handed me my door keys for an apartment on the ground floor ... and was gone. The concierge was pleasant enough, but didn't show me around the apartment or explained the facilities to me. I should have insisted on that, because - as it turned out - I wasn't able to get the heating in the bathroom going - over two days. So the shower was a very unpleasant experience: everything got cold and wet, nothing was able to dry out. And that set the tone for the overall experience: - Ground floor rooms are usually a bit darker than rooms in higher levels, so the mainly dark color scheme of the walls didn't help. And the bedroom window went out to another wall, maybe 2 metres away. - One outer wall in the living room/kitchen was mouldy, but since you couldn't open the windows, you couldn't dry it out. - In the kitchen there were no lights under the cupboards - you only had the chandelier on the ceiling as a light, but since you stood with the back to it, the working surface of the kitchen was overshadowed. - One lamp had a broken light, but since I was only there for a night, I did not bother. - Doors were partially blocked by cupboards, so you couldn't open them fully. - The mattress was very tired, and it was a Queen bed - so there would be no chance for two people to have a good nights sleep. Bottom line: As much as I liked the location, I did not like the experience staying in the apartment. You really got the feeling that someone wanted to take as much money from you as possible (in this case 150 GBP), but did not want to do/invest much for it.