We had a wonderful 11 days in Crete with Jess’s house as our base. The house had everything we needed for our stay. Jess is a great host even though we never saw her. She was quick to respond to any questions we had. The house is ideally situated for exploring the western half of Crete The sunrises were amazing to see. The pool was great and was seen to a couple of times during our stay. Kefalas town is about 15 mins away on foot and has a couple of good restaurants and small supermarkets.
If you’re up to it we definitely recommend walking the Samaria Gorge route. We drove to Sougia and took a taxi from there to the north entrance of Samaria. Taxi was booked in advanced and we could park at the taxi companies parking for free. We ended the walk in Agia Roumeli and took the ferry to Sougia where the car was parked.
For a great snorkelling experience Octopus Bay is a 15 min drive away - avoid if windy with wind from the North.
Nearest sandy beach is at Georgioupoli about 20 mins by car.
A must is to visit Kournas freshwater Lake and rent a paddle boat for an hour or two. Great for swimming and snorkelling too.
Rethimno is also a nice town to visit - easier to get to than Chania.
Practical:
A car Is definitely needed when staying in Kefalas. A medium size car at least if you are more that 2 persons as there are some steep inclines to overcome. The driveway down to the house is very steep with a bump halfway down so drive down slowly/carefully if you have hired a small car. When turning into the driveway entrance hold as far to the right as possible to avoid risk of scraping the bottom of the car. We started with at trip to Chania and stocked up for the first few days by going to one of the big supermarkets there. Lots more choice if you have special needs eg. vegetarian or lactose free products. The local supermarkets were great for topping up with the daily basics like eggs, bread and bottled water/drinks. A tip regarding mobile internet access - manually select “Cosmote” as operator. This seems to be the best operator and gave us 4G/5G instead of our devices constantly defaulting to operators with edge/3G.