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| Gorgeous estates overlooking the bay. |
We haven’t had any issues with a vacation/holiday home since we rented our first home outside the US in Belize. The city water only came on for a few hours a day, and we needed to stay around to fill buckets with water. Also, with no bug screens on the windows and scorching heat, I had no less than 100 no-see-ums (sand fleas) bites, making me miserable and unable to sleep.
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| We have breakfast in the tiny kitchen, but dinners will be at the larger dining room table. |
Crazy! We found another place and moved out in a week, but the owners refused to refund our money. Now, years later, the rental website HomeAway would have been helpful to resolve this and get us a refund.
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| I don’t know how we managed to fit all the perishables in this tiny refrigerator. This is the only refrigerator on the property. We’ll have to shop with this small space in mind. |
This property in Falmouth certainly doesn’t have nearly as many nor severe issues as that house in Placencia, Belize. Overall, the problems are minor, except for one…we still don’t have a single towel in the house except for two kitchen towels.
We couldn’t shower without towels, although I used one of our dish towels to dry off this morning. Weird! That was a first for me. Tom will wait until the towels hopefully arrive today.
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| The living room (lounge) has everything we need. We each sit on one of the two sofas when working on our laptops. |
In addition, the shower leaks onto the floor even when not in use due to a poor plumbing connection. The owner warned us to make sure the shower faucet is fully turned off when we’re done. However, there’s something wrong with the connection when we never used the shower yesterday.
The house wasn’t entirely clean or organized when we checked it. It wasn’t filthy but things like messy bed-making, dirty rags lying around, etc., made us a bit frustrated. Since that time in Belize in 2013, we’d never encountered any issues. The holiday rentals were always meticulous.
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| A little messy with our stuff cluttering the dining room table, but this space will work well for dinners after we’ve removed everything. |
Some owners leave us a variety of converters and adapters to use for plugging in our digital equipment. Alas, none were here, and we headed out to town to buy what we needed. As it turned out, the grocery store, Tesco, had everything we needed, and we were able to recharge all of our equipment.
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| This seagull perched on the fence post, asking, “Ya got any pellets?” We did not, and he later flew away. |
While we were at Tesco, we decided to go grocery shop for dinner. We were both exhausted, needed showers, and didn’t feel up to going out. Instead, we made a quick and easy dinner, as mentioned in yesterday’s post found here.
As it turns out, the house has an odd configuration of steps on the second level where the three bedrooms are location requiring us to be extra careful when going from the bedroom to the bathroom.
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| The oceanfront houses, some large and others small, present an eclectic look along the coastline. |
The steps leading to the second level are otherwise straight up and not excessively steep, compared to the spiral staircase in the house in Ireland. Also, there’s only one bathroom on the second level, requiring us both to go up and down several times a day.
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| Rolling greens hills at a distance. |
I feel that the steps to the bathroom will be a good form of exercise, and so far, I’m doing ok with it. But, the parking situation, with no assigned parking, requires we scramble to find a spot, and then once we do, the hilly roads present a challenging walk to get to the terraced house overlooking the bay. Tom suggests he drop me off at the gate to the house, but I insist on walking with him.
From there, we have to walk up or down 25 uneven stone steps to get to and from the back of the house to the terraced level where the house is located. I’ll undoubtedly be getting much-needed exercise while here, which ultimately is a good thing. See the photo below for these steps, taken from the bottom. There is a handrail which helps.
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| Twenty-five uneven stone steps to get from the house to the road and then on to where Tom’s been able to find a parking spot. |
Otherwise, it is beautiful here with stunning views of the bay, the smell of fresh sea air, and access to many restaurants, pubs, and shopping only minutes away. The downtown area is unbelievable. I can’t wait to take photos and share them with all of you.
The bed and bedding are comfortable, and last night we both had a good night’s sleep. Today, Tom is catching up on missed Minnesota Vikings preseason games while I work on some financial tasks, leaving us free to embrace this exquisite town and all that it has to offer.
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| The view is astounding in each direction. |
A special thanks to our friend/reader Liz, from Bristol, England, whom we met in person in London in 2014 when we stayed in South Kensington for two weeks, and she came to meet us. She took the train, two hours each way to meet us, and we both had a fabulous day with her, staying in touch all these years.
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| This view takes our breath away! |
Yesterday, when we arrived at the house there was a piece of snail mail for us. Liz had handwritten a welcoming letter on a pretty card, making suggestions on what to do while we were here in her ancestral town.
Whoever handwrites letters these days? We couldn’t have been more appreciative and impressed. Hopefully, we’ll see Liz again when we move up the coast for these four properties as we get nearer and nearer to her home in Bristol.
Have a beautiful day! We’ll be back with more tomorrow!
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| This young male’s horns have started to sprout. He was mature and experienced enough to know that looking into our eyes would reap some rewards. How right he is! For more photos, please click here. |