Smile House

Very nice apartment, a couple of minutes from the old town. Spacious, fully equipped, with extremely helpful english speaking owners. There are no cars allowed in the central part of Matera but easy to find a parking spot 3 minutes by walk from the apt. Easy checkin with someone waiting for us.

- The location was perfect and the apartment was huge, especially the bedrooms. It's just a couple of minutes from the nearest entrance to The Sassi, a couple more minutes to Piazza Vittorio Veneto (the main square) and you pass several bars and restaurants before you get there. The nearest supermarkets is only a 5 minute walk. - Despite being this central the street was very quiet. - There were lots of coffee pods and different varieties of tea bags in the kitchen. - The lift worked every time we wanted to use it! - They allowed us to check out a little later because of our flight time.

Both bedrooms has 2 single beds put together, not "double bed", which were not exactly the same size and I kept banging my knee on the metal frame of the other bed when I turned over. - There is a lack of sockets, only 1 in the kitchen, which is behind the lidded hob so you can't make tea and coffee at the same time or boil a kettle when you're using the hob. - As it was -1C when we were there we needed the heating. It's either ON or OFF, there is no thermostat so we were often too hot or too cold. The description on Booking.com is not accurate. - there is no "airport shuttle (Free)" and that's one of the reasons we booked it. The bus that runs from the airport to Matera is very irregular so unless our flights are at a suitable time we end up booking taxis. (we visit quite often as our son lives there) - the only clothes drying rack is hanging off the balcony so if your clothes are wet because it's raining there's nowhere to dry them. - no "pants press" or "ironing facilities" which made it difficult as we were going to an important party and needed to iron some clothes that had creased on the flight. In the end we had to take them to our son's flat to iron. - no "free toiletries" or "bathrobe". - It says "shared lounge/ TV area" but there are 2 TVs in the bedrooms to be watched from the beds, not ideal. - The main balcony was covered in pigeon poo and during our stay 2 pigeons got caught in a cage on the wall which was very distressing as they were flapping around for days.