Halvard Apartments at Castletown

Location was excellent.

Communication ahead of arrival re parking and access

In an excellent location, overlooking the sea. Regular bus service just around the corner and very good value for money. Car parking was easy and close by. Apartment was spotless, with all required facilties and more. Well laid out and very comfortable, nice patio overlooking the sea. Overall a peaceful week and enjoyable stay.

Noisy on Saturday night, with last visitors coming in around 1am with hob nail boots. (not a fault of the hosts.)

Beautiful rooms, excellent terrace at first floor level overlooking the sea. Great restaurants next door.

I liked the location right in the middle of the old town, the concierge was pleasant enough (we didn't have a very long conversation), the WiFi and TV was good, communication with the landlord was good.

I needed an overnight stay to be close to a two-day music event, so I booked the apartment in the same town. After my first enquiry I got told that the apartment was not available before 15:00 on the day - but when I rang the doorbell at 14:30 (the weather was really bad, and I wanted to get in and unpack), the concierge opened immediately, handed me my door keys for an apartment on the ground floor ... and was gone. The concierge was pleasant enough, but didn't show me around the apartment or explained the facilities to me. I should have insisted on that, because - as it turned out - I wasn't able to get the heating in the bathroom going - over two days. So the shower was a very unpleasant experience: everything got cold and wet, nothing was able to dry out. And that set the tone for the overall experience: - Ground floor rooms are usually a bit darker than rooms in higher levels, so the mainly dark color scheme of the walls didn't help. And the bedroom window went out to another wall, maybe 2 metres away. - One outer wall in the living room/kitchen was mouldy, but since you couldn't open the windows, you couldn't dry it out. - In the kitchen there were no lights under the cupboards - you only had the chandelier on the ceiling as a light, but since you stood with the back to it, the working surface of the kitchen was overshadowed. - One lamp had a broken light, but since I was only there for a night, I did not bother. - Doors were partially blocked by cupboards, so you couldn't open them fully. - The mattress was very tired, and it was a Queen bed - so there would be no chance for two people to have a good nights sleep. Bottom line: As much as I liked the location, I did not like the experience staying in the apartment. You really got the feeling that someone wanted to take as much money from you as possible (in this case 150 GBP), but did not want to do/invest much for it.