Agriturismo La Rogaia

Thank you for the nice comment, we are glad you enjoyed your stay with us!
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We pondered for a long time whether it was really worth responding to this "review."

Ultimately, however, we decided to do so because on the one hand we do not want to spread a completely wrong impression about our agritourism, and on the other hand we feel it is important to alert other agritourism operators about this guest.

So let's get started:

Mr. Flavio Serino says there is poor lighting from the parking lot to the apartment he rents.

What are we to say? He's right.

We are a farm surrounded by nature in the Umbrian hills, not a nightclub or a city center, so it is obvious that there are no streetlights or other big lights.
In fact, many of our guests come to us because they appreciate the fact that they don't suffer from light pollution here, and unlike big cities, they can still see the stars here, even, some bring telescopes because the night sky is still intact here.

However, we have installed solar lights along the driveways and sensor lamps at different points of the farmhouse for a fair balance between the different needs of our guests. There are also fixed lamps for all apartment terraces, including the terraces of the apartment rented by Mr. Flavio Serino.
In addition to this in the informational emails we send to our guests before their stay, we advise them to bring a flashlight with them, a piece of advice that is, as we like to admit, a bit old-fashioned since almost everyone now has a cell phone with a flashlight.

Mr. Flavio Serino writes, "Too many bugs and especially mosquitoes..."

Again, we are a farm in the middle of nature. It is normal for there to be insects, in fact it would be very worrying if there were not. We can understand that people who grew up in the city are no longer used to insects, but everywhere in the countryside it is normal that there are insects, it is called nature.
We are happy to have many species of insects that are rare and hard to find elsewhere, butterflies and moths, different kinds of bees and wasps, grasshoppers, crickets, cicadas and different species of beetles, each one very important for the proper functioning of the ecosystem. These are animals that are endangered in many places, and we are proud to have them in our garden.

Of course, there are also mosquitoes, also important to the ecosystem and impossible to eliminate. We do not hide this, in fact we even explicitly point it out to our guests in the information we send out in advance, we also provide each apartment with mosquito sockets for the inside and mosquito coils for the outside, and in front of all the windows are mosquito nets, all methods that have worked very well for us and our guests in the past 20 years.

During the summer months, in fact, mosquitoes are everywhere in the country, all over Italy (except perhaps in the high mountains or on the seashore, as long as a cool wind keeps them at bay) and the number of insects and mosquitoes with us is absolutely within the normal range.

Mr. Flavio Serino attributes the high number of mosquitoes to the "poor cleanliness of the greenery."

Well, as anyone with some general education knows, mosquitoes are not attracted to dry leaves or plants in general but to animal and human exhalations, such as carbon dioxide, lactic acid or uric acid. Dry leaves or branches have none of this to offer mosquitoes, in fact they do not live in hedges or plants, rather, there their predators are found namely other insects and birds. It is inevitable to have mosquitoes wherever there are animals and humans in the warmer months of the year, especially in our Lake Trasimeno area.

In addition, Mr. Flavio Serino also complains about the "countless dead leaves."

This year all of Italy and even much of Europe has suffered historic drought and record temperatures, and our area has not been the exception. Given the scarcity of water it has been impossible for us to keep our complete 2-hectare green garden fresh and it has been inevitable that many plants and trees have lost many leaves in order to survive. In some areas we leave a fair amount of leaves under the trees since it is a good way to keep the ground underneath moist and to minimize evaporation of the precious water. It is a natural system that can be seen in every forest and has worked on our planet for millions of years.

Mr. Flavio Serino writes that the swimming pool (right next to the house where the apartment is located) could not have been sufficiently exploited for the same reasons.

It is a bit difficult to understand what he means but let´s try. Does he mean that there are so many dry leaves in the pool that you can hardly move in it?
Well, it doesn't. The leaves that fall into the pool are carried by the cleaning pump through the skimmer into the filter, where they are regularly rinsed out. If a lot of leaves accumulate after a storm, we also clean the pool by hand.

Or do you mean that the pool is no longer accessible because of the lush vegetation surrounding it?
This is not the case either. The pool is surrounded by a garden with typical Mediterranean plants. Other guests who stayed with us at the same time as the Serino family made extensive use of the pool and, as we know for a fact, did not need de machete to reach it.

Perhaps Mr. Flavio Serino would like to say that the pool could not be used by him because of the large number of mosquitoes that roamed in it?

We can certainly rule that out as well. Our pool is checked and treated daily according to regulations to ensure consistently high water quality, and mosquitoes do not particularly like rough, chlorinated water and usually use it, neither to cool off nor to breed.

Before confirming a reservation we always send an email with all the necessary information to decide whether our farmhouse is the right place for vacation or not. In the case of direct bookings through the agriturismo.it portal we give the option of a free cancellation to anyone who decides-after reading our information-that our agriturismo is not suitable for their needs or expectations.

But now we come to some things that Mr. Flavio Serino says nothing about.
For example, the significant increase in the family, about which Mr. Flavio Serino is silent.

Mr. Flavio Serino had booked an apartment for two people. Afterwards we were asked if we could put extra beds for an adult and a child, who might possibly be visiting this apartment for three more nights.

We pointed out to Mr. Flavio Serino that this would be rather tight, but he didn't seem to mind, and we provided him with the two requested beds, charging the modest sum of EUR 12 per day for two additional guests (as any other agriturismo we know would have done).

We also offered another small apartment to Mr. Flavio Serino and his family so they would not have to live so crowded, but he declined.

In the end, the apartment was occupied by three adults and two children for the entire week of the stay, which is an increase in the number of apartment users by more than double.

We do not know if, and if so how much, the family is in financial difficulty, but by the end of the week they left without having paid the modest overcharge.

Financially we can do without it, but we found it quite a rude gesture, especially coupled with such a review.

What our farmhouse actually looks like can be seen from the many realistic reviews from our guests, both from other reviews on agriturismo.it and on our facility's website.

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Thank you Luca for your beautiful review. We are glad that you had a good time at our place!
Best regards
Annette
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Good morning Luciano,
Thank you for your positive comment, we are glad you enjoyed your stay with us!
Annette
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Dear Antonio, we are glad that you felt at home with us and we hope to reverberate! Annette
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Dear Steve, thank you so much for your comment - we are happy that you enjoyed your stays at La Rogaia and look forward to welcoming you back this year!