We loved our two week stay at this beautiful retreat in the mountains of Crete. The apartment is equipped with everything you need and the beautiful terrace is a wonderful space for relaxing and eating outside. Then views are just amazing and the sky at night is just astounding- never seen the whole milky way so many nights in a row.
The host family live in the house below the apartment and couldnt have been more welcoming, every few days popping over to give us another plate lf delicious home cooked Greek food- stuffed vine leaves, spinach pies, cheese and honey pies, stuffed zucchini flowers....such kindness and thoughtfulness. They don't speak English but her son Yannis (who doesnt live there was there to help us check in) gave us his contact number and if we had needed anything I'm sure he would have been able to help us. The location on the mountainside is just so charming with chickens pecking around, garden allotments and olive trees. They also had a days old newborn puppy who we kind of fell in love with!!!
Sougia is the nearest beach (20mins away) and is absolutely beautiful and very relaxing and quiet compared to most other beaches so a lovely spot to be based. Make sure you swim to the far left of the beach where there is a little cove through the rocks and the water is crystal clear. We jumped in the sea at midnight on our last night and saw hundreds of bioluminescent plankton - try it!! (You see them sparkling around you when you wave your arms under water). Coupled with the amazing starry sky, milky way and shooting stars overhead its quite a magical feeling.
Paleohora is also worth a visit and we went to a few of the beaches either side of there - grammeno and krios were some of my favourites. Paleochora is about 50mins drive and the town has more of a "buzz" and lots of bars and restaurants so we enjoyed visiting there too.
The nearest shop ("mini market") is about a 10min drive and sells all the basics as well as some nice local honey, olive oil, raki etc etc. There nearest supermarkets are in paleohora so if you intend to do lots of cooking I would recommend maybe stopping in chania to do a big shop on your way from airport. For simple meals the local shop is fine though.
All in all a wonderful trip and just what we needed. Thank you for hosting us :)