We stayed at Villa Chiara for 3 weeks. Overall our experience was positive and we had fun but there were certainly some disappointments along the way.
Firstly, the house. It’s a big house high on a hillside with plenty of privacy. The pool is clean and refreshing and the barbecue and pizza oven are good fun. There’s a supermarket 15 mins away and lots of small towns and beaches nearby.
However, the house and its furniture are showing their age. The power goes out when more than one appliance is used. Several mattresses were tired and sagging, the sofas were worn and uncomfortable, and the dining room chairs were either missing or falling apart (despite having 20 beds there were only 6 or 7 usable dining chairs). There are broken things languishing everywhere — the electric coffee machine doesn’t work, the kitchen scales don’t work, several stopped clocks were hanging around, all of the fireplace tools were broken, the kitchen drawers are wonky and awkward, several light bulbs were blown, etc. There is a general air of gradual decay and lacking maintenance.
Secondly, cleanliness and housekeeping. The house was clean on the surface but there was a lot of accumulated dirt. A coffee pot with who-knows-how-old stale coffee. Dirty, crumb-filled tablecloths. Mouldy bathrooms and shower curtains. A leaky toilet. We knew in advance that we needed to bring bedsheets and towels but we did not expect to not find a single toilet roll, bar of soap/bottle of hand wash or tea towel in the house. We do not object to buying these items as we use them but to find basic sanitary items missing was really frustrating. Providing a few toilet rolls would go a long way.
Emanuele did rectify a lot of these issues when we raised them. He organised three new mattresses, a new washing machine when the old one broke down, and extra cleaning. He tried hard to make us comfortable. That said, we felt that the house wasn’t up to our modest expectations and we would not book again.