Centro Vacanze Lido Smeraldo

We had a very good experience with this holiday village which we selected through tripadvisor, in spite of some critical reviews which you can still read below. We stayed for a week in august 2014 with our 2 sons (10 and 11) and ended up wishing we could have profited from an extra week. Beware : the village is one of the oldest on the litoral, and some of the infrastructure has not been renovated in a long time. However everything is well maintained and I never came across anything that did not work very well. At the same time, the village is incredibly charming : the beach is huge and well furnished with deck chairs and parasols. Rows of lovely painted wooden beach houses separate the beach area from the accomodations, with a nice network of shady paved paths that connect everything. There is vegetation throughout, allowing you to move your chair under a nice tree on the beach to escape the sun and heat. The accomodation is not for the faint of heart : do not expect a luxurious dwelling. However our two flats were clean and did not miss anything. Electrics, toilets and plumbing worked well, and the beds were very comfortable. Note that our flats did not have air conditioning (I suspect none of them do), but as nets are fitted on all windows they can be kept open at night. We had 30° in the day, but slept fairly well thanks to the lovely sea breeze. Speaking of insects, we did not see any mosquitoes, but maybe it was because we had a windy week. The village has a small bar and a restaurant. In spite of the questionable looks, the restaurant offers really, REALLY good local food and pizzas at extremely affordable prices. The town of Lecce is just 15mins away by car, and it is absolutely gorgeous. There are also lots of other bathing places worth visiting up and down the coast, and the staff will be happy to inform you about them. Clients get a parking spot in the shade, so the car is always nice and cool when you need it. But the most amazing aspect of this place was really the hospitality. The whole village has a big-family feeling, and we were welcomed and treated with amazing friendliness, politeness and kindness by everyone we encountered, both staff and other clients. Be advised however that the vast majority of clients are locals, so little foreign languages are spoken and a knowledge of italian is advised. This is particularly true for children : the village is full of them, but they all know each other quite well, so it might take a bit of time to get "in the group". Basically, if you are looking for a real slice of Italy, we definitely recommend spending some days here.