Kings Villa

2 readers found this review helpful

As with the last review by Mr S Walton, we had problems from the beginning. Firstly there were no keys for us to enter the villa, we had to wait until a cleaner arrived to let us in. We contacted the Cosmos rep who came along and apologised that he did not have a set of keys to give us that he would have to get a copy cut, which he did twice and neither times did they fit. The cleaner took the keys from the Cosmos rep and she went to get them cut herself, on this occasion they did fit. During this time we could not leave the villa.
Cosmos had put notices up to the fact that there had been a speight of breakins in the area and to make sure that windows/doors and shutters were always shut. The villa next to our (Villa Estella)and also another behind us were broken into, the intruder was still present when the family awoke! We contacted the Cosmos rep and asked to be moved, he did offer a Hotel, but we would have had to pay an extra 250 euro's or an apartment with a shared pool with building work still in progress, so we decided to stay where we were. Needless to say we did not venture far and when we were at the villa we only had the door open that we were sunbathing by, everything else was locked up, it was like Fort Nox.At night we left the tv and downstairs lights on, for our own piece of mind. There is also a safe, but as the Cosmos rep didn't know the combination, we couldn't use it for three days until he had contacted the owner.
As we were here in early April, the weather was warm in the day, with a cool breeze, but at night you needed warmer clothes, especially as there was no heating in the villa. The only thing that kept us warm was the supply of blankets we found in the wardrobes.
The Villa itself was nice, I don't think it had been used all that often (I wonder why) as it smelt a bit musty - probably because no one ever had the windows open, especially in the bedrooms. The pool was very cold, which you would expect this time of year. The beaches were lovely. There was a local supermarket, chinese and Indian restaurant (which we would highly recommend)in the area and a local Portugese bar/restaurant on the local beach, but not a lot else.
We have been to the Algarve several times now and this has been the worse experience we have had, we had always thought that the area was a safe place to go, we will definetely think twice in future.