Wow!

We came to Crete for a family wedding and were fortunate enough to be the first people to stay in the beautifully renovated Rimondi Veranda House.

Manolis was an amazing host and extremely helpful. There was a welcoming bottle of champagne in the fridge when we arrived and he provided us with eggs, fresh vegetables and wine, all from his family farm, during our stay.

Location:
The location is fantastic. The House is right in the heart of the narrow streets of Rethymno Old Town, extremely close to the historic Rimondi Fountain, built in 1626. It's also next to their family owned Galero Cafe and Restaurant, which is run by Manolis and his brother. A great place to eat and watch the world go by!

Access and Directions:
I am giving a lot of detail here because like many of the best places in Crete, the hardest thing is locating them, because maps and directions are not always accurate or detailed enough.

The House's amazing location does mean that it cannot be directly accessed by car. However, there is a public parking lot 3 minutes walk away. This cost us EUR 9 per 24 hours and is located on Ioannou Melissinou (a useful one-way road that allows relatively easy access in and out of Old Town).

Our advice would be to access Old Town from the west by driving clockwise around Fortezza Castle, entering Old Town by the Eastern Gate. If you try to access it from the east or by driving through the Old Town following a Sat Nav, you will almost certainly fail, because the streets are closed off to vehicles for large parts of the day.

You will almost certainly need to arrange to meet Manolis to find the House. It's part of the Cretian culture to want to meet and welcome people and you will need a key and tour of the house, so you shouldn't worry about putting him out.

In our case, our flight to Heraklion Airport was delayed, meaning we arrived by rental car at Rethymno at 10:30 p.m. at night. I felt very bad because we were running so late, but Manolis told us not to worry and happily met us on Ioannou Melissinou, where he, his wife Lidia and one of his employees met us to help with our cases.

One small issue: The property is a town house style on several floors, so even though we had help with our cases, older or disabled people might struggle a bit with all the stairs. This didn't cause us a problem though.

WiFi:
For many people nowadays, access to good WiFi can be an important item. Because we were the first guests, we had a small issue with the WiFi being a bit slow. I mentioned this to Manolis in passing and within 2 hours (!) he had a signal booster installed and it then worked perfectly.

Finally, my family and I thank Manolis for a fantastic stay. RPS