Submitted by mobile mum on Wed, 07/18/2012 - 5:00am. Thèmes: travel

We continue our travel diary at Pierre & Vacances with one very essential element for a successful holiday: housing! Though we do spend most of our time outside in the summer, we do expect to have a minimum of comfort even on our holidays.

The advantage of spending your holiday in a village club: you will have less chances of a bad surprise, which can happen when you rent directly from a private owner. The housing is actually equal to its description. But the advantage is that in case of any problem, you will always find someone at the reception (if when arriving late at night) to answer all your questions and concerns.

Let's admit it, we prefer having space and above all feel free of our mouvements once the kids are sound asleep. Forget about apartment and house rentals where the kids have to sleep on the sofa bed, but it's actually not easy to find, especially when you have three kids. When our little one was still a baby, we just needed to add a cot, but now we need three "real" beds, and that became more complex...

The house we occupied in Ardèche had the following configuration: a top floor bedroom with three beds and a sofa bed in the living room on the ground floor, which was ideal. But unfortunately we could not find the same configuration in other Pierre & Vacances clubs. This time we opted for a 7/8 person house with three bedrooms on the top floor (one parental room, one room with two single beds, and one room with a bunk bed sleeping two). The two extra sleeping places are in the living room downstairs. So we have all the space we need, and because we benefit from a VIP pack, we can also enjoy a private garden that the kids adopted right away!

Another great plus: the two bathrooms (one with a bath, the other with a shower) is just ideal when coming back from the pool and saves us plenty of time to enjoy fully an "appéritif" ;0).

We personally like to be close to the centre of the village, the pools and the kids clubs, which is the case right now. Pierre & Vacances gives you the possibility to reserve in advance the location of your dream rental (building, floor, view...) (rates and conditions are available at the recption of each village).

Regarding the services, we enjoyed the fact that all beds were freshly made when we arrived (included in the VIP pack) which is ideal after a long car trip, and it's also nice to not have to carrry around with you on your holiday bed sheets, towels, tea towels, etc (which are provided, as well as a complete kitchen cleaning kit).

We've also tested twice the responsiveness of the repair services to change the dishwasher that was not working when we arrived, and to renew the bed sheets after a little "incident" of our little one, and were of course helped within the same day.

Though the Wifi access is high on our list, it is unfortunately not available throughout the whole village. It is currently only available in a few houses and at the reception where it is free. Luckily there are comfortable sofas and chairs, as well as soothing music at night.

To summurize it all, we are satisfied with the housing, even more than during our last experience in Ardèche, but the house being bigger, the price per week is obviously higher...

Again the different services available (reception open 24/7, repair services...) allows us to kick back and enjoy our holidays...

To be continued in our next episode;0) …