Marelia Villa 2

The villa was beautiful and we were greeted by Argiro, our host, at the door to show us around and explain any details for our stay. The villa itself is beautifully appointed in a modern style with a very nice, useable kitchen and other facilities. Argiro also got in touch every couple of days just to make sure all was okay and if we had any questions, which was nice. It is situated just outside a town called Timbaki, which we later found out in our Rough Guide to Crete that the author thought it the "ugliest town in Crete" and "not to spend any more time there than you had to". Well we had a great time there. The town centre is a 10 minute walk from the villa and provides, bars, cafes, banks, supermarkets, local greengrocers, fish merchants and bakers and it is a very busy, bustling community. I will agree it isn't the prettiest of places, but to see how locals live and work and enjoy their lives was much more interesting than having cheap tourist shops everywhere (I'm looking at you Matala...). Everyone seemed very friendly despite my poor attempts at speaking Greek and I lost count of the number of times total strangers said hello to me. As for the villa, we loved the pool and the outside barbecue area, the kitchen was well equipped and large enough for all we needed, the second patio by the kitchen was lovely for breakfast and the shower room lovely and a great size. The view from either patio of the impressive mountains was amazing. This was enhanced by a few thunder storms that we had whilst there, but it amazed me that there was still snow on the top of the largest mountain, but then I found out it was one of the largest in Greece. Almost forgot; the town has a fantastic market every Friday from 08:00 to 14:00. Fantastic local produce all at very good prices.

It is difficult to think of anything that we didn't like. This didn't really affect us, but there is only one shower room/toilet, so a larger group may have found that restrictive, but as we were only a couple this was not an issue. There is a shower by the pool though if you are feeling a little daring!