Casa Rural Mirador de Aranjuez

There were ten of us from July 11th to 13th, and we had a lovely time. The house is clean and well looked after, and it’s peaceful around there. It has what you need for a relaxing break with friends or family. The owner was courteous and professional. Definitely recommended.

This was the worst rural house stay I’ve ever had. We paid €1,860 for 12 people from Tuesday to Sunday at MIRADOR DEL VALLE, 210 Avenida del Valle, which also belongs to TU CASA TEMPORAL and is managed by Pedro. The cleanliness was practically nonexistent. We spent the first afternoon cleaning the whole place because it wasn’t usable as we found it. There were drink rings on the tables, old marks on the chair seats, lint balls the size of ping-pong balls, and cobwebs on lamps and windows. Garden furniture was covered in bird droppings, the kitchen was greasy, and the stairs to the basement, once gray granite, were black. Pedro said he handled the cleaning and that it wasn’t a big deal. When he brought a replacement fridge on Friday, his wife came with a bucket and mop, offering to clean whatever I wanted, far too late to be useful. The house was brutally hot. None of the four double bedrooms had air conditioning. There were only three units, in the living room, on the stairs, and in the basement, which would be a fifth room with seven beds, and they didn’t cool the house. When I complained, Pedro said it wasn’t so bad and blamed the internet workers changing the router, who had left things open. Eventually he agreed and brought me two penguins to “fix” me. The two-door refrigerator in the kitchen didn’t work. Pedro said it was my fault and that the fridge was fine, even while I showed him that the freezer ice packs had turned into bags of water. We had to throw out a lot of spoiled food. After I complained on Tuesday, he finally brought another fridge Friday afternoon, when it was no use since I was leaving Sunday morning. For that price, I expected basic quality in the furnishings. Instead there were broken sofas, apparently dating from the year of the accident, covered in blankets that had once been white and hadn’t seen soap since they left the factory. The walls had holes exposing brickwork and even electrical connections. After all the complaints and excuses, Pedro eventually admitted the house needed attention and said he’d see how to compensate me. He let me leave at 6 p.m. Sunday, but didn’t come to collect the keys. He told me to leave them in the house and go. He didn’t even have the courage to pick them up.

The house is spacious and has what you need, but cleanliness isn’t its strong point. There was dust, cobwebs, and the grill was especially bad. I’d add mosquito screens: it’s out in the countryside, and once you open a window the moths and mosquitoes eat you alive.

We had no hot water all weekend, and nobody did anything to fix it. Then, on our second night, we spotted a suspicious car parked outside and called the Civil Guard. They said the owner had hired someone to watch the property, something we’d never been told. We called the owner, who gave us several different explanations. He lives in his car and sleeps there. If we’d been warned, we wouldn’t have been so frightened, especially with the house so isolated and not knowing what to think.