Villa Nandina

Host is very gentle, friendly, attentive and smart. Warm welcome and helpful tips for places to visit and things to do. Host offered us cold beers and juices. The place is wonderful, spacious and open. Large windows and an EXCEPTIONAL view over the green hills and forests. The pictures on the website do not represent the beauty of this location and the villa, as it is far better in reality. Among the 6 high quality places we visited in France (5star castle venues included), this one stood out as the one that offered the most to our needs and wishes as a family. Lovely pool and far away from everyone, yet close (30/40mins) to most top locations in Southern France. We only stayed 3 nights, a full week would have suited us better.

All these items have been discussed with the owner, who has been very positive about my perception: There are surveillance cameras inside the house, pointed at the main living room and a hallway on the 1st floor. Big no-no privacy wise for me, but apparently I'm the first one to notice or voice discomfort over this. Owner says these cameras do not record.. and are for intrusion alert purposes.. These camera systems also provide audio recording capabilities.. Well at least it is not a hidden camera setup, which would be worse... Anyways, cleanliness is a bit below par. There is a lot of dust on most surfaces, but perhaps this is to be expected given the location. There are dog hairs on the sofas, which are not cleaned or vacuumed thoroughly. The quality of the matrasses for the kids is below par. These are matrasses with hard knots all over, and they are placed directly on the floor, which means the knots are felt without any dampening effect. Mosquitoes in the sleeping rooms... not all that pleasant. There are odor repellents but they aren't effective. The hills are just a bad place for them i guess. A mosquito net in front of the windows in the sleeping rooms perhaps. Creaking bed in the main bedroom. The house was not easy to find through Google maps or Waze, the indications (address) weren't sufficient. A GPS location would suit better or any other trick that makes the road trip efficient. Finally, the ground floor, main living room/kitchen area does not have air conditioning, making it sweltering hot inside, even with the windows open and ventilation on. Windows open at night means all the mosquitoes and flies basically fly in to give you a hard time. Id suggest installing aircon downstairs as well.