Traditional Village Houses

For the third year in row again an excellent stay in Skaninou Traditional Houses. Very convenient if you like a quiet place to stay in Cyprus: clean, good beds, swimming pool, nice host (Manu is wonderful and will always be ready to help). These are indeed old houses, but very well converted in simple, cosy, . just all you need modern apartments with wifi, a small kitchen and a bedroom. Swimming pool is nice and clean. The village Skarinou is easy accessible, with a large supermarket and filling station along the highway and nice village people too. Next village is Lefkara, famous for its lace. I do recommend staying in Skarinou. I do regret that the Taverna, just across the street, did not survive and had to shut the door. Accommodation: 9 Hygiene: 9 Host: 9,5

I want to be as fair as possible to this property. In the summer, it clearly has the potential to be a great place to stay in Cyprus. The village is pretty, and the location is out of the way yet in easy reach of Cyprus' excellent highway system. You probably need a hire car to make best use of it, as the village is quite isolated, but there are good public bus services available on the main roads and in summer this would make a reasonable alternative. In high season, Skarinou has what looks like a nice taverna right opposite the entrance to the property, and there are several restaurants within a ten minute drive. So what is the problem? The first one is that out of season - and we visited in late December - Skarinou is completely dead. The taverna looks to be closed for the period, and that is the only restaurant in the village. Secondly, the property itself is clearly not designed for the winter. There is no heating, and Cyprus gets surprisingly cold at night. A true 'traditional village house' would have a fire or stove of some kind, and that would have made all the difference, but there was none. I have never been so cold as on the one night we stayed there. The room we were given was supposed to be suitable for two couples. As it happens, the other people we were planning to come with dropped out, and it was just as well. The supposed 'two single beds' consisted of something that looked like a hospital bed, plus a sofa, not even a proper bed, and they were both shoved into the kitchen/dining area. It was certainly not a two-bed suite. The general state of the rooms was shabby and comfortless. The shower tray in the bathroom looked either dirty or stained. I had to take a cold shower as there was no hot water. Eventually - literally after about ten minutes - the water ran hot. The place gave an impression of being spartan and lacking in amenities. I have stayed in barracks with more of a feeling of comfort. Tiled floors and whitewashed walls are all very fine, but you need to give some sort of homely atmosphere to a place. A 'traditional house' would have presumably rugs, pictures, anything. I should have anticipated problems from the response, or lack of response, of the property manager to enquiries online before our visit. The website stated that the property could organise a pickup from Larnaca airport. I messaged him via *******, through which we booked the property, and the reply was 'get a taxi'. All right, fine, I then messaged about arrangements for checking in. There was no reply. Tried again. Again no reply. The manager knew our flight times, and as it happened there were no delays, so the taxi arrived around 7.30 pm. The front office was closed: the place seemed dead. Our taxi driver took pity on us and very helpfully rang the number given for the office. Eventually someone appeared and showed us to the room. It was all very perfunctory. We had booked a week there, but after one night of being frozen we had had eno

We have been staying here for 9 days now,luckily just 1 day to go. For 5 days there was no hot water.Now it is working but we have to ask for the boiler to be switched on! The swimming pool has a mouldy line all around the water line.No safety ladder to get in and out of pool. The pool lining is uneven and rucked like a badly fitted carpet. Electrical sockets not securely fixed to the walls. Shower curtain dirty,shower tray discoloured. Very poor quality holiday accomodation all round. The outside areas are nice. This could be a very nice holiday destination,but it needs serious investment to bring it upto an acceptable standard. Until that happens we will not stay here again.

We stayed few days in this traditional village. We enjoyed our stay here. A Very beàutiful, clean and peaceful place. The staff Manu was so lovely and helpful. Highly srecommend the place. Infact, I am coming back here for a few days again.