Villa with pool in the Alcantara valley, near Etna and Taormina.

Dear Stephen, many thanks for staying with us. It's nice to read that you enjoyed the house, the garden and swimming pool, and the surroundings. Unfortunately, because of the goodness of his heart, our neighbor has indeed decided to take care of a number of stray dogs. Fortunately he lives about 50/60 meters from the villa, so not exactly "next door". But if it has bothered you then that is of course really annoying. At the moment I am staying in the house with my family and during the day we actually hear nothing, it is only in the evenings that they sometimes get excited about something and they start barking in unison. Besides the TV with satellite and WIFI, there is a nice hi-fi set (with a mini-jack so that you can plug in anything) so guests don't have to take it with them.

We were completely astonished and incredibly sad after reading this review and responded also in private to Ms Kerstin. We were under the impression that they were very satisfied. My sister, who is the local caretaker of the house, also was quite upset because she felt that there was a genuine nice friendly relation with this client. She also said that by the looks of it, and by talking with the guests, they were having a very pleasant holiday. We have never received a negative answer to our questions about how they were doing and if everything was OK. They chatted about a lot of things Sicily, gave tips about wonderful walks in the area and so on. Now to the review, which is completely false in our opinion: The house is cleaned by two cleaners thoroughly ,every week and I can assure you, more thoroughly than most of homes in Europe, with copious amounts of cleaning products and everything needed. Of course, it can happen that someone is not completely satisfied. The normal course of action would be to raise the issue or complaint with us. But not with a 1-star rating. Then Ms Kerstin writes that the house needs renovation according to the owner. This is an outright lie. My brother in law told her that we are going to renovate the roof this year. As a matter of fact: if my brother in law didn’t tell her that, she would 100% not notice anything at all. The ground floor was renovated a couple of years ago. Had a paint job last year and is perfectly fine, just like the rooms on the first floor. Where Mrs Kerstin gets the idea that the house needs a renovation is a mystery to us. Then there’s complains about the cold pool. It is losing water (??) and needs to be refilled with cold water? That very personal and right now, in October, people are having a lot of fun in the pool without complaints. Surely there are leaves in the pool when there’s some wind. That’s why there are skimmers to clean the surface of the water. We clean them every other day, but also tell guests that the can empty them as well if they want. The pool is cleaned several times per week. Then a remark about an odour in the house. This is the first time I hear that. And we are still wondering what Ms Kerstin means by that. We and all other guest don’t smell anything. Probably because the house is very clean.. All in all, we are completely flabbergasted with this 1 star (!!) review and think it’s totally unfair and downright a bit mean. As I said we were under the impression that our guests are having a real nice holiday and had friendly contact with them so this is just an enormous unpleasant surprise. Le me finnish by adding that I want just to mention that on other platforms we have an average score of 4.8 out of 5.