This place is special.
Driving up to the house is always a delight. It is a beautiful old building that sits all by itself commanding its immediate environs. It has a sense of calm and timelessness. No noisy neighbors, nobody looking down on you.
This house begs you to enjoy the moment. Go ahead, open another bottle of rose. Play petanque out front. In the mornings open the shutters and look at the green hills. Sit on the terrace and soak in the sun. Have a cocktail and watch another beautiful sunset.
The many meals we prepared in the big kitchen and then slowly devoured in the courtyard were all special. The family reunion we hosted, with a giant paella, lots of wine, music and dancing couldn’t have been more memorable.
So why only 4 stars?
The house is finished in a casual way. The big renovation work was done well, but some details leave a lot to be desired. If you are renting it for a week as a summer house, one where laughing kids will be jumping in and out of the pool, running around with wet feet and wet bottoms on the couch, all very casual, its perfect.
We rented the place for 6 weeks. And this is where “casual” to the point of borderline neglect came to be, day by day, less than wonderful.
Examples:
- The ceiling in the bedroom downstairs is not fully finished, and almost every night tiny little bits of plaster fall on you.
- For the love of god, do not turn on the jets in the bathtub. The horror that came out…
- 40F degree nights and the heating didn’t work. It took a week to get it repaired. We used the fireplaces. A lot.
- The igniters for the burners on the stove don’t work. Told repairman coming. Six weeks and 4 boxes of matches later, still didn’t work.
- The trundle bed in the loft was so infested with dust-mites that the person who slept in it just one night needed urgent medical attention the next day. Seriously, it was very, very bad.
- We counted over a dozen scorpions in the house.
- The wasps love the fig tree, the pool, and most of all the downstairs bedroom.
- The pool is not heated. We used it 1 week out of six due to cold September nights cooling it way down.
- The landscaping is neglected with dead vines and trees.
- The laundry lines are dilapidated and unusable.
Now you might read all this and think we had a terrible time. We didn’t.
Yes, it needs some real TLC, but despite all the issues it still holds a lot of magic. It is a casual, slightly worn, slightly unfinished slice of Provencal paradise.