UP BENASQUE FLOR de NIEVE

Very Good
Traveller Type: Family with Young Children

Fair
Traveller Type: Family with Young Children
  : Benasque is a very pretty and lively town with many restaurants and in beautiful surroundings. There is plenty of free parking which Lorena showed us where to find just about 5 minutes from the apartment. We never had any problems finding a free space. The pool is very nice, but it is not related to the apartment, but rather is the municipal pool for the whole town. It costs EUR 2.50 pr day (1.50 for children). In spite of this it wasn't too crowded and had very easy and friendly access. The apartment is very well-equipped and WiFi worked fine. The fact that there is a washing machine was another big plus for us
  : Benasque is surprisingly noisy place at night and as the apartment has no aircon, we were forced to sleep with the windows open as it was very hot. There were so many people talking/shouting/laughing loudly and by 2am every night I eventually gave in and closed all windows to drown the noise out, but then struggled to sleep because of the heat. One night I lasted until 3:30am when there were still very noisy people down in the streets. So we didn't sleep much the whole week.The fact that we could not pay for the apartment through booking.com, but had to pay by direct transfer to the owner. This was done in two instalments, both of which incurred bank charges for me, and I had no guarantee through booking.com that I had even paid for the apartment.But worst of all was the demand for a EUR300 deposit when keys were handed over. This again incurred bank charges and the outgoing amount for me was UKP266.36 which when returned from the owner amounted to just UKP245.24 so I lost over UKP20 just on this deposit transaction. Lorena did offer to have and return the deposit in cash, but what would I do with EUR300 cash at the end of my holiday? The deposit is apparently "in case we run off with any kitchen appliances" - seriously? I have never come across demands for deposits before when booking holiday accommodation and when I tried to cancel the booking within 24 hours of making it, this was flatly refused by Lorena even when I involved the help of booking.com. Never again will I book a private apartment through booking.com as I didn't benefit from their payment system nor guarantees, and was ripped off by incurring several bank charges - the only winner here is the bank!This whole experience really tainted the holiday for us, and I hope the owner will see sense and dispense with the ridiculous deposit in future, at least for people outside the eurozone.