Date of holiday 1st - 15th July 2006

We are a family of 2 adults and three boys aged 9, 12 and 14. Our holidays are very simple, we go to an apartment, relax, enjoy the food, swim in the pool and soak up the sun, and that is it. (Sounds boring, but after a long hard working year it is just what the doctor ordered). That is what we wanted from this holiday as well.

We choose the Villa Olivo as it offered us the accommodation we wanted, which was a single apartment. In actual fact the apartment consisted of 4 rooms and two balconies. The main room was large and included the kitchen and living area; there were two good-sized bedrooms and a small bathroom. (The toilet was in front of a window and open viewing to the whole world, this was of some concern to all of us). The kitchen area had good facilities, cooker, oven, fridge and all the cups, saucers, pots and pans etc. The beds were fine and in well equipped rooms. There was no air conditioning.

We booked this accommodation through Inghams (what I am about to explain has nothing to do with this company as we have travelled very successfully with them for the past 8 years and will continue to do so in the future). On arrival at the Villa Olivo we were met by one of the owners, a woman who spoke virtually no English, we signed the forms, handed over our passports, 150-euro deposit and were shown to our room.

2 The fridge: The Fridge in the apartment was old and not working at the level it was set at, so I turned it up, went out and bought some food and stocked it up. The next day when we came back to the apartment for lunch I noticed that the fridge had been turned down and no one in our party did it. The Inghams rep came in to see us to see if we had settled in and mentioned that the owner had turned the fridge down as it freezes easily. Over the next few days we would turn the fridge up and some one would come in during the day and turn it down.

4 Dirty swimming pool: During the first few days the boys said that the pool was dirty and I did not notice, as the owner seemed to clean it. As the holiday progressed I began to notice a ring of dirt around the pool. From the beginning of the second week this was very noticeable. One of the boys was not able to go into the pool on the last two days as he acquired an ear infection; on the last day another one of the boys had a similar ear infection. When we got home both boys were taken to the doctor and he confirmed the infection.

6 Visitors: We had visitors from home up one day for lunch and within 2 minutes of them arriving the owner was up and she demanded that they left. I had to contact the rep and she phoned the owner to explain that the friends were only up for lunch. This was mighty embarrassing for us and made us feel very uncomfortable.

8 Noisy neighbours: Our boys were not allowed to make a noise playing a game of badminton, but the non English speaking neighbours (and they were not Italian) were allowed to make lots of noise and have their visitors in their rooms until very late at night.