Le calme, la vue Appartement très bien équipé et propre

Lovely apartment in a gated complex with a large balcony overlooking the Pyrenees. This is an extremely comfortable, well equipped apartment in a very good location. The balcony effectively doubles the available space. A concierge handles key collection and departure arrangements. There is a microwave, small oven, kettle and dishwasher alongside a good quality TV, bluetooth speaker and fast WiFi which all enhanced our stay. There are small supermarkets and restaurants/takeaways a few minutes drive away, and plenty more restaurants along the nearby sea front. It's a very peaceful location, with good access to nearby motorway network. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, with a lot to visit if you want to move away from the beach. There are lots of wildlife in nearby nature reserves - we saw wild flamingos in the nearby lagoons, as well as ancient castles and Spain is less than an hour's drive away. After two years stuck in the UK due to the pandemic we really appreciated a sunny, warm and relaxing break somewhere very beautiful. We are a group of friends who regularly holiday together and had selected the apartment due to it's location and the fact that it had sufficient beds for 3 people to each have a bed (as opposed to sofa beds). The two single beds are in a gallery above the kitchen which has a low ceiling. The ceiling height is not readily apparent from the photos and it's worth noting that due to this the gallery is best suited for children or shorter adults. The concierege was extremely helpful. She met us on arrival and although she did not speak English and our French was not good enough to fully understand everything she said we communicated in writing with the assistance of Google translate. This made things much easier and helped avoid any misunderstandings.

We had not previously rented a holiday apartment in France, so were surprised by the relatively high cost of sheet & towel rental as well as the level of cleaning required on departure. The sheet & towel hire was listed as an extra, unspecified cost, and was arranged separately through the concierge a few days before arrival. When we arrived the beds were not made up; we were provided with sheets and pillowcases and left to make the beds. After a very long and tiring drive alongside the high charges we were disappointed by this approach. With hindsight we should have brought our own sheets and towels. We were given detailed instructions about laundering some (but not all) bedding items as well as a 21 point check list of everything that would be inspected prior to departure. This included some surprising elements such as washing out the bin, washing the washing machine's detergent tray and cleaning the windows - all things we would normally expect to be handled by the owners and covered by the rental charge; overall we felt that we were expected to do substantially more of a deep clean prior to departure than we would normally expect from a holiday rental.