We had a non-sunny October week in the Villa Palena with a crew of 11 (two families, out of which four couples, one adult and two teens). Even if the sun did not shine, the experience was very good. Villa is spacious, has excellent bedrooms, excellent beds, very good bathrooms (one for each bedroom), spacious kitchen, outstanding dining areas inside & outside, plus a lot more. For us adults the downstairs 8-ball pool table, sauna and jacuzzi were the cloudy vacation delights, PS 5 for the kids. Outside swimming pool area we hardly tried, but it appeared excellent.
Sofia works marvellous for the daily service. Missing something with English skills, but covering that fully with the attitude and helpfulness. Five stars for her definetely!
With non-sunny weather the villa location was quite bad - long drive to any restaurant nearby, as the small beach restaurants closed after lunch - not enough customers for dinners. In the village there is practically nothing else, you need always a car to go. Our favorite sport, padel, was about 30 minutes drive away. For jogging and walking, you can do the beach route, it felt safe, but quite lonely and boring - even somewhat of a construction area.
Some things could be improved though with the villa Palena. Turkish sauna is so strongly mold smelling, that it is practically unusable and feels even unhealthy. Sheets were partly stained and non-clean when we arrived. We had to do two days without warm water, possibly due to the storm in the island. Also, it appeared that you have to select between AC and warm water, if the sun doesn't warm the water boiler. The kids' football ground was painted during our visit, preventing use for a couple of days - not something you would expect as a paying customer. Military jets fly a lot around the villa airspace, some were a bit annoyed by the noice. A few small things like this dropped one star from our review.
Overall, we had a very experience, and can recommend the villa Palena for large groups such as ours.