Franschoek Lermitage Villa Two Bedroom Lake View

Clean and luxurious

The construction in the estate

Very new. Clean bright and airy. 15 minute walk into town. Hotel reception staff helpful even though we had booked directly with the apartment owner (unknowingly). Aircon excellent and very quiet. Close to a small swimming pool. Good sized rooms and a lovely lounge area

It’s at the edge of a building site where new apartments are being built so daytime noise high. It was unclear when booking that we were dealing with the apartment owner rather than the hotel. Kitchen tap was falling out (just needed a bolt tightening but still poor). Getting to the apartment involved a lot of steps. Elderly or disabled could struggle

A lovely apartment with stunning views across the mountains. Large rooms with plenty of space for three of us. Close to the shops and restaurants of Franschoek, walkable during the day and a cheap uber back.

The apartment is showing signs of wear, and could do with some basic maintenance to fix hooks and cupboard handles that have fallen off with use. The kitchen cupboards are very high - meaning I couldn’t reach anything but the bottom shelf.

First impressions internally are very good with a luxury feel to the space. Nice views of the mountains & lake. Individual parking space adjacent to property. Convenient for centre of Franschhoek by car. Nice towels & Bridget was very friendly.

We arrived to a building site with the path to our accommodation dug up whilst they carried out work to the adjacent property. During our 7 night stay, we had no water for 3 of the those days for between 2-5 hours at a time - very inconvenient when you can’t shower, do washing or use the toilet. We had to cancel one of our restaurant reservations as we had no idea when water was coming back on. There was zero communication telling us when it was being turned off. I went down to the hotel reception to ask about the water supply but was told as this was a private rental, it wasn’t their problem and the entire site had no water anyway. As I said first impressions of the interior are very good but once you dig a bit deeper, you can see numerous issues. There was dampness in most rooms with blown plaster which needs addressing. Large diagonal crack in 2nd bathroom travertine suggesting structural issues. The kitchen is really low quality and not consistent with a “luxury” development. The taps (every single tap) are absolutely shocking - loose, not designed for multiple users, difficult to get a good flow. They all need to be replaced with modern mixer taps especially considering SA has a water shortage. The sink in the main bathroom is very slow draining. There were also ants in the bathroom coming through the cracks. The biggest letdown for us was the lovely large patio had no relaxing furniture for lying on, just some cast iron dining chairs - what a waste. Overall the place looks tired, with damage to wardrobes, refrigerator (dents), in need of some decoration & urgent work to bring it back to standard. Some of this damage has been caused by people not respecting the place which is very disappointing.