The villa is fabulous, beautifully equipped - Maura really has thought of everything. She is lovely, & incredibly helpful with local knowledge/recommendations etc. The views were spectacular, and everything was very clean & in good condition.
There were just a few things we wish we'd known/had made clearer to us:
- the pool is really some distance from the villa - rather than the 30m it says in the details, we registered 100 steps on the Fitbit, and it is across the drive, through a gate, and then about 4 levels down the steeply terraced garden. We were very fortunate in that the villa upstairs was empty for most of our stay, so Maura was very happy to let us use their pool, which was on the same level as our accommodation;
- the villa 'above it and connected to it' is in fact upstairs, Villa Carlotta being on the ground floor. Again, we were very lucky in that it was unoccupied during our stay, but I can imagine that it would be quite noisy from footsteps overhead if it was full;
- there is a puzzling system of door locking in the bathrooms, meaning that both my husband and I got trapped in separate bathrooms on the first evening. It took us some time to work out how to get out (my husband worked it out first & then came to rescue me!) & I can imagine that it would be very upsetting for elderly people, or for parents with young children the other side of the door in the same situation. I would have loved an explanatory sign on the wall, to avoid the panic!;
- the garden was steeply terraced earth and trees, not grass, as we expected, although there were plenty of seating areas on each level of the hill;
- the view from the villa is spectacular, facing east and looking over the valley below and the sea. However, that did mean that, being on a steep hill, the sun started to disappear from areas of the terraces from about 2, and was completely gone behind the villa by 4 or 5pm. We were disappointed not to be able to sit out on a sunny terrace in the evenings, with a drink, when we could see the valley below bathed in bright sunshine!
Obviously, there is nothing that the owners can do about the geography/topography of the area, so I do feel a bit mean mentioning some of the above - Maura couldn't have been lovelier, but I just feel that these are things that I would want to know beforehand when making my choice of villa.