First of all, a huge thank you to Mónica for helping with everything, always replying very quickly and just being on the ball.
I’d definitely recommend a car. Because of some problems, we didn’t hire one and it was more expensive and less practical that way back but Mónica gave us a list of taxi drivers, told us the car capacities and which ones had car seats and even booked the cabs for us because our Spanish wasn’t very good!
We absolutely loved visiting the places Mónica suggested, I think my favourite was the small quaint village of Castellet, situated in a National Park, with an old medieval castle. The castle isn’t usually open to the public, so check dates! But we enjoyed the lake view and the nature walk. There’s one restaurant called “the Trilby Hat” (that’s he translation, I don’t remember the spanish name), and the fish (my husband) and duck pancakes (me)were absolutely delicious and high standard - we have a foodie in our group and he was fully satisfied! Price was good too. Another town we visited at Mónica’s suggestion was Sitges. It was very pretty, with lots of shops, a beach and gorgeous narrow streets - much more touristy AND the shops / restaurants didn’t close between 4 - 8 pm which was very useful!
There was a beach 5 - 10 mins drive (45 mins walk) from the villa, with a supermarket where we ended up doing our shopping. Luckily, the beach wasn’t very busy but that’s probably due to time of year (early June). Very pretty, with a promenade and some restaurants and cafes with a beach view - these operated the usual hours for food so would serve food from 1 - 4 pm and then again from 8pm.
In terms of villa contents, the rooms were great, beds comfortable, showers very good, living room nice and spacious with some games (poker, jigsaw puzzles, cards). The BBQ was the best one we’ve ever used! The sitting area outside was also lovely. We spent quite a lot of time in the games room on some days, and having the garage door open made it more cosy. The pool, unfortunately, wasn’t heated so was quite cold (too cold for our toddler to stay in for more than a few minutes at a time) - normally it would be warmed up by the sun, but we had rainy days inbetween sunny days so it never warmed up properly. We found a small pool for kids so used that instead. And there were some floaties for kids! When the dishwasher wasn’t working, Mónica called an engineer straight away. The only “warning” I’d give is that there are lots of dogs barking.