Symeon met us at the car hire place and drove slowly back to the villa, which was much appreciated as we adjusted to the boiling heat!! We think a Hire a car is essential - we paid £140 for 8 days (young drivers)
We had a quick introduction to the important stuff and then we were left on our own! Be careful of the door, we locked ourselves our within 5 mins but thankfully the nice pool guy turned up and let us in again! So keep the key on the outside. Aircon was great and very much needed. No four poster bed on the bedroom but that was made up for by the hot tub which we enjoyed in the evening! The pool was so lovely and we'll maintained - just what you want to dip into when you're cooking in the heat! Every single thing was catered for, we had a lovely welcome pack with honey, eggs, water, juice, olive oil, and alcohol! Lovely firm yet comfy bed, great shower, robes and slippers. Nice wildlife - lots of lizards and swallows dunking in the pool. Also a few not so nice wildlife - we saw a few big spiders and the praying mantis' grow quite large!! But they're only out at night, and we probably saw them more because we lay on the sunbeds under the stars most evenings!
Some recommendations:
Beaches: glystra (nice sunbeds and water), monolothis (go to beach alika and then chrisama for sunset dinner), st Paul's (near lindos), lake in the middle of the island (you can't swim but the view was lovely and we saw a little tortoise! Also turn back when you get to the dam bridge, it gets very off-roady past that point!).
Restaurants: Angelika's tavern (at the end of the drive, nice authentic greek food), petalas (2 minute drive towards kiotari, lovely beach front restaurant and great food), mea terra (very new, only opened a month as at June 2019 - quite expensive though so we saved it for the last night as a treat).
Bakery in gennadi! Best. Baclava. Ever.
Mojito beach bar - Symeon recommended this and it was so cool and colourful - go! It's 5 min drive down the road.
We can't wait to come back, and all I can say is - if you're thinking about booking it, just do it! It farrrr exceeded our expectations! Thank you so so much Symeon, your home is a delight!