Casa vacanze Cucciolo

The location was lovely, and we enjoyed being out in the area day and night. The apartment we came back to, though, was awful. It was tiny despite supposedly having six beds, with a rotten-pipe smell and terrible heat in an attic where the ceilings were too low across half the space. The lift was small, had no safety sensors, and stopped one floor short, so we had to climb two sloped flights of stairs. There were two windowless rooms with no ventilation ducts. One had no floor or painted walls, and the bed in the other left two of us sleeping in a smelly, airless hole. We asked for camp beds for our friends to sleep in the living area; at least they weren’t stuck in that room, but the beds took up much of the already cramped space. The two refrigerators we were promised included one that didn’t work, and our yogurt went bad. The air conditioning barely blew any air. We didn’t use the stove because it was greasy and filthy. The bathroom was painted bright canary yellow. There was a bedbug in the bidet, a cockroach in the shower, and a sewer smell that stayed with us the whole week. The blinds didn’t close, and we slept with the windows open every night because of the heat. The receptionist couldn’t fix any of it, then disappeared after the morning of our second day and wasn’t around at checkout. The building also had small insects and baby cockroaches in the rooms, along with filthy cockroaches that ran under the only two pieces of furniture in our “apartment.”

It’s a good residence, and Francesca, the owner, was friendly and helpful. We needed a little luck to find parking, though. There are only a few spaces, and the blue-line parking costs €5 a day. The location is handy for the beach, less than 300 meters away, and for the evening promenade in central Rimini. A few areas could use routine maintenance, and the cleaning could be more thorough.

What should have been a relaxing Christmas stay turned into a nightmare. The apartment was dirty, particularly the bathroom, cutlery, and stovetop, where we found a piece of chicken left by a previous guest. The fridge smelled so bad we couldn’t even use it for a bottle of water, and I had to throw out some food. The “new” furnishings described online didn’t match what we found. The building itself was old and run-down, and the price seemed too high compared with better-maintained places I’d visited for less. We had no towels or hairdryer for a day and night. I reported it to the reception WhatsApp number, but there was no reply; we only got them on the morning of day two. The reception area was dirty and smelly, and the card machine didn’t work. I asked if I could pay later because of the machine, but the receptionist said nobody would be there in the afternoon. I had to pay cash, then walk around looking for an ATM. Parking information was unclear too. Although the website listed internal parking as an amenity, the receptionist warned us to park there at our own risk because another car could block the gate and trap us. So we left our new car on the street, with all the risks that came with that. I contacted the property about my concerns afterward and got no response.

Being so close to the beach and the center was the one good thing. The rest of our stay was a mess. We were in the attic, and instead of enjoying the beach, we spent time cleaning the apartment when we arrived. There were only two bedrooms, one without a window or skylight for ventilation. One mattress was just foam, and I could feel the bed slats underneath. The sofa bed was broken, so I slept on the couch for more than a week. You have to bend over to get into the rooms, too. The kitchen was tiny, short on cutlery and glasses, and came with just one pot and one pan. The table and the rest of the space weren’t big enough for our group. Most of the stove didn’t work properly. We were happy to see two fridges, but one was broken, and nobody did anything about it. We lost a whole fridge’s worth of food. A small windowless storage room had two fans, but they were crooked and noisy, so they weren’t usable. The bathroom had a bidet, sink, tiny shower, and toilet, which was stained with urine. At night and during the day we could hear the lift from inside the apartment. We wouldn’t recommend it.