A Casa di Eli

You can walk straight from the garden onto the beach, so if you want a good B&B with sand right there, Casa di Eli is a great fit. After a few steps you'll reach beach clubs such as Feniglia57, where you can get breakfast, while the public beach is a few hundred meters farther on. The B&B sits at the foot of Colle Pertuso, and Elisa welcomes you with a smile and lots of kindness. Rooms are cozy, very clean, and have what you need. Each has a small table and chairs, sometimes two deckchairs as well, and there's a lovely shared garden and a small private parking lot.

The price isn't cheap, but the location and the property are extraordinary, right on the beautiful Feniglia beach. The building has recently been renovated and fits well with its surroundings. Rooms are on the small side, but furnished nicely in a modern style. Elisa was very kind about letting us check in late and take a shower in the afternoon on our departure day. Breakfast was excellent, and they accommodated every request. Wi-Fi worked well throughout the property, which helped since our phones had no reception in the room.

Feniglia beach is stunning, and being right on it was the one good thing about this stay. The room was badly cleaned: we had to clean hair from inside the closet ourselves, and its doors were sticky, with lint and dust all over the sides. The bathroom was moldy and dirty, and the faucets were old and corroded with limescale. Breakfast was cheap store-bought food, with hard croissants and fruit that was half inedible. The property was poorly maintained, and the gate to the beach looked abandoned. Just outside the gate, on the left, there was a very dangerous sinkhole. If you drove into it, you couldn't get out. It wasn't lit at night, and nobody warned us to watch out. The owner needs to put more care and time into the business. With better upkeep and attention, it could be fantastic. It's a shame, but we definitely won't return.

Feniglia beach is the real draw here: wild, beautiful, and not crowded, with both public and private stretches. There's space outside each room with a drying rack, a shared spot with sun loungers and a shower, and a lovely terrace where we watched shooting stars on the night of San Lorenzo. You can sleep to the sound of the sea, and I love how fascinating the cicadas are during the day. Rooms are spacious and have all the comforts, though I'd suggest a more thorough cleaning. The place itself is beautiful, but breakfast needs work. The setup with everything on the table instead of a buffet is fine, yet the frozen products and cans of Nutella are hard to see. Maybe keep the Nutella in the kitchen for children or anyone who asks. The croissants often come out hard and nearly burnt, sometimes inedible, and the little rolls are like rocks. Toast would be easy to make. A few biscuits would be nice too, since not everyone likes toast. It doesn't take much to make guests feel looked after: fewer things, but better quality. Croissants from a pastry shop or a slice of homemade cake would be appreciated. One or two cakes a day would be enough for all the rooms, nothing fancy needed. The juice also isn't presented well. It should be sealed on the table or brought in its own sealed container when requested, so you know what you're drinking. There's just one campground in the area, with a small minimarket and three beach restaurants, two of which close in the evening, so you'll need a car if you want more to do. OBETELLO and PORTO S. STEFANO are definitely worth a visit.