Ortigia Family House

We originally booked this ground floor apartment in 2019 for 2000 and fortunately were able transferred it to 2021 and then 2022. The location is perfect, the apartment is roomy with a court yard. However, there are a number of flaws that detract from the pleasure of any stay. 1. The door to the kitchen is only five feet high. Impossible not to bump your head. 2. The refrigerator is not in the kitchen, but beside the front door in the sitting room. 3. The bathroom is dark and poorly ventilated. 4. The wash basin is in the bedroom. 5. There were no tea-towels or a toaster

First, the good part; this apartment is huge, and beautiful. But the downside. . .we had booked this apartment for 10 days during January this year. We love Ortigia and were looking for a nice relaxed time. The physical apartment is lovely, with exposed stone walls, high ceilings, etc. However, the listing was quite lacking in important information. To start with, it implies that it is on the ground floor. It is two flights up, no lift, and for us, that was a problem, with heavy suitcases. Then; it says that it is heated, but heated means space heaters. There was one in the kitchen area, which is where we spent all of our time while in the apartment, huddled around this rather weak space heater. The heater in the bedroom went on and off all night, creating a difficult situation for sleeping, and was inadequate to heat the large room. Without the mattress pad heater, we couldn't have slept at all. The bedroom opens onto a terrace, and you have to go outside to get to the rest of the apartment, including the bathroom, which wasn't fun at night. The electrical service is not robust. We had to plug and unplug appliances such as the toaster and the microwave and the coffee maker as you couldn't run them at the same time. If you had the space heater on in the bathroom, it would trip the breaker if you had another heater on. And then there is the water; it is not potable, so we had to go out and get water to drink and to cook with. None of these things were apparent in the listing, and so after 4 days we simply changed our plans and moved on, without a refund. Our losses included not just the 6 days we didn't use, but also flight reservations that had to be changed, and a lot of time spent re-booking the rest of our travels. If we had known more about this apartment, we would not have booked it. We spend a lot of time researching our travel options and count on having accurate information when we book lodging, and we were disappointed that we booked this, as we had to change a lot of our plans.