We read the reviews before we booked, but I think our group would like to do more justice to this fantastic place - we were a group of 8, covering three generations and had an absolutely fantastic time using this beautiful villa as a base. The unexpected and highly welcome plus points: Incredible views from the top and bottom terraces (spent many an evening mesmerised by the dramatic sunsets!), so many different places to sit, could find a shady and pleasant place any time of the day, lots of novels, cook books, DVDs, magazines (English, French, German) and games provided - we needn't have taken so much of our own! There were two sets of Scrabble too! Lots of recliners at the pool. Lots of trays for carrying food and drinks out, lots of kitchen equipment, even the enthusiastic cooks among us never ran out of types of crockery! An Italian coffee maker is provided, no need to take your own. The mattresses were surprisingly comfortable, and even though we were there at a time when nights were relatively cool, there were enough blankets provided. We discovered lots of plastic beach toys for kids in the laundry, including for batting games - fantastic! (Most of the blow-up things had holes though). Just really well thought through.
There were rather less positive aspects too, which are no so bad if you take them into account beforehand: the TV connection didn't work at all during our stay there, despite the Francesco's valiant attempts, and the Wifi was only just about good enough for texting, definitely not for fast enough for surfing / streaming. The footpath to the beach is really quite steep and adventurous and one of us was unpleasantly surprised by a large aggresive wild cat. A good solution was to drive to the road below then park at a little lot, taking the path under the road for an easy 2 minute walk to the beach without having to drive through all the dusty Torre delle Stelle roads. On nights too cool to eat outside, note that there is no dining table indoors!
As we were there late Oct/beginning November, most everything was closed during the week, but on the other hand we had entire beaches to ourselves (the Costa del Rei beaches are a dream!). All in all a really wonderful holiday!!