Mazet Arlequine

Très bien situé dans un cadre vraiment idyllique à proximité des sentiers de randonnées.

The gite is compact, the garden well planted and the lighting in the evening lends a magical air at night time when sitting out enjoying the view of the Alpilles. The pool was inviting and clean and the loungers and external seating arrangements worked well given that these are all flexible. The gite is only 20 minutes easy walk into the town which is pretty and, given how small it is, has a surprising number of restaurants (all excellent in their own way) and useful shops (bakers, butchers, cheese shop and grocers). The Friday market was superb in terms of quality of items and whilst the Brocante was disappointing on the Sunday, the atmosphere was fun and it was a treat to wander round and explore.

The intention of a holiday is to get away from day to day work stresses and busyness and to relax. We booked this gite in February for 14 nights and paid the full amount in June, the month before we were due to leave. We scheduled our other travel arrangements around these nights to include our departures from and to the UK and the intervening nights before arriving at Eygaliere. The week before we were due to leave to start our holiday, we had a message from Theo saying that there had been a bug in the booking system and we had to reduce our stay to 11 nights. Bearing in mind we were booked for a stay in July and August, we said no as we recognised that there would be considerable hassle for us in finding someone where else to stay and probably, given the time of year, additional cost. Theo's response was to cancel the whole booking and refund our money; this he did on the Saturday before we were due to depart on the following Friday. There was no apology or recognition of the extreme stress he caused. That weekend was Bastille day so Theo was uncommunicative over the whole weekend. It was not until the Wednesday, 2 days before we were due to leave the UK, that he confirmed that we could book the gite for 11 nights. We did so and found an alternative stay for the three missing nights. When we arrived, again, there was absolutely no recognition from Theo of the stress he had caused us in cancelling our booking. No apology or compensation for the error that we did not make. In addition to this, there were several issues with the gite. When Theo was showing us around, I asked him about when (given we were there for 11 nights) bed linen, towels and kitchen linen would be changed. He seemed surprised to be asked but then confirmed that it would be on the 5th day; the bedlinen was not changed and neither were the towels.