Porticcio Terra Bella

Fair
Traveller Type: Family with Young Children
  : Nice appartment in a not so recent residence in a village-like setting with a cosy atmosphere riminding your mediterrranean grandma's place. Vincent was sympathetic and allowed to stay a bit later on the last day (11:30 am). Ideal location if you want to visit the golf of Ajaccio or explore a bit the inner island or the coast north and south of Ajaccio. Very close to the airport and the nearest beach is quite big and animated. The tourism office, a boating school, nice bars and restaurants, bakeries and sweets shops can be found on the beach. A good place to take the boat to Ajaccio if you don't want to drive your car, or to leave on a full-day or half-day boat excursion to iconic sites and as far as to Bonifaccio. There's a snack bar at the swimming pool kept by a couple of ladies, where you can order some french breakfast (bread, butter, jam and pastries) one day prior for the next morning if you like. There's a nespresso coffee machine in the kitchen. The shower and toilet were clean.
  : We booked this place for the location and because it stated there was a swimming pool and indeed there is one, but we found it rather old and dirty to our taste, so we never swam there, which was very disappointing for my ten-year old. There were green-grey stains on the border walls of the pool, the foot-cleaning bassin at the entrance was grey blurry water, the floor was always wet and there were no sunbeds nor chairs to sit, so this is far from a place where you want to go to relax by the pool, which is a pitty because it was a big pool with a nice view of the golf. The appartment was okayish for the money, the second room was on a mezzanine and there's no way for an adult to walk up straight (less than 1m30 at its highest point), but it is okay for little kids, who have fun sleeping in such places. The kitchen was not well equipped, some ustensils were missing or were a bit sticky and not that clean, so it's okay if you just plan to grab your breakfast or cook of pot of pasta and butter, but a bit challenging if you're planning to cook a chef's meal for a group. We would have appreciated to find at least a bit of cool water in the fridge or one dose of coffee for the first morning or some shampoo in the shower. We learned after booking that we had to pay for the bed linen and towels (10 euros per person for the whole stay), but we were even more surprised that we had to pay for the cleaning (50 euros) or do it ourselves. I usually try to leave a place in a correct state, but there's a differerence between putting some order before leaving and cleaning a place thoroughly to make it ready for the next visitors, which can only be done by the owner or a professional cleaner as it takes time and dedication (from my personal experience) and cannot be left up to the leaving guests. This might explain why the appartment looked clean at first, but there were stuff that had been overlooked during the clean-up.