Travel - Our Villa in Corfu. Greek Island Heaven.

September 15, 2015



Thank you for all of your lovely comments last week about the blog being a year old already! We're back from a heavenly week in Greece and as promised to some of you on Instagram, here's the first of the two travelogue posts on it. Today is all about the villa where we stayed. And tomorrow, our favourite places to visit. 




We love going away at the start of September. The school holidays are over so prices get reduced and you don't have to worry about being sat next to children on your flight {or the beach!}. It extends the summer just as the nights are beginning to draw in and it starts getting chilly in England. 

I booked this trip to Corfu at the end of last year. We wanted something short haul, somewhere that would be relaxing and just a week of doing nothing much. The Greek Islands called, we'd only ever been to Santorini but there were so many to choose from. I decided to start searching by villa instead. Most looked rather basic and slightly rustic looking. All very nice but we wanted something a little extra special. The other issue was that most of the luxury villas were huge and slept up to 18 people or something ludicrous. So then I began searching for luxury villas for two and came across this little gem on both Conde Nast Traveller and an article in the Guardian travel online. It was available for the first week of September and looked incredible. I was sold, and booked it before the EasyJet flights had even come out!

Corfu has a reputation for being a very British {in a binge drinking, overly packaged kind of way} party island. It's probably the Greek Island with the most flights from the UK everyday, and it's big enough to fly there direct compared to some of the more undiscovered islands. But this villa was in the North East part of the island, unspoilt and nicknamed Kensington on Sea. It's Gerald Durrell town, a favourite of the rich and famous and boy was it gorgeous. Quiet bays with fishing boats bobbing around, sparkly seas overlooking mountains in Albania just across the water, fresh fish, wooden shutters galore. Sure everybody speaks English, the majority of the other holiday makers we saw were Brits. But it's not at all tacky, {just avoid the few cafes in Kassiopi with English breakfasts and football games on tv!}, the tavernas are all very Greek. There are no high rise hotels or loud bars. It was a little piece of heaven for the week. 

The villa itself was incredible. Like 'I want to live here' incredible. It's set on the Rou Estate, a hamlet that was only recently developed from a deserted old town. It's a fifteen minute steep drive up into the hills and along tracks through the olive groves, a journey not for the faint hearted! But once you get there, the views more than make up for it. And it's so quiet and private {in the owner's words - you can take all your clothes off here and skinny dip ;)}. Although crucially not too quiet, there's the Rou Estate villas by Simpson Travel next door. I think I'd be freaked out if it was on its own in the middle of nowhere. 

There was an alfresco dining area where we ate breakfast, lunch and dinners sinking into the cushions. Everything was so perfectly styled yet comfortable too. The kitchen was probably my favourite, Gail the owner really has decorated it all so well. She's collected things from her travels over the years to decorate the house with. I just wanted to take it all home and recreate it. Serious interior inspiration. And it had everything we needed, a dishwasher and washing machine, even down to dishwasher tablets and a welcome food hamper in the fridge for us in addition to all the basics you'd need for cooking. There was a BBQ, music docks and daily maid service meaning we didn't have to worry about tidying anything up for the week. The bed was super comfy, the mattress was handmade. And you could wake up and look out over the sea and watch the sunrise. We spent most of our days chilling out here and reading books by the pool. It was too nice to leave! But also because of the drive to get anywhere. In fact that was the only real negative about the place {actually also note the mosquitoes, take good bug spray with you. And if you're planning to go to Greece in August the wasps can be a real problem. We saw a few pesky ones but burnt coffee to keep them away}. We like being able to walk to a town or somewhere to sit by the sea and get a drink or an ice cream in the evening. You can't walk anywhere from here, a car is definitely essential. But we knew that when we booked it and as such stopped en route from the airport to stock up on a supermarket shop to last us for the week, including lots of bottled water, you're not advised to drink the tap-water there. In the end we had breakfast in every morning, a few lunches at home and cooked for three out of seven dinners.

Aside from hotels and resorts, it was definitely the nicest place we've ever rented and I was kind of reluctant to blog it on here, can we just keep it a secret?! I fear that it's now set the standard rather high for our next trip away, I think it will take some beating!! The magical week just flew by and we were so sad to leave the gorgeous villa behind. A truly beautiful place for a relaxing, romantic week. Sometimes it's the simple, Easyjet kind of holidays that are the very best. 

I'll share the rest of our week, and favourite beaches/restaurants tomorrow. R <3 xx 

{The Villa - Pool}
The pool area was gorgeous, and so much bigger than I was expecting from the photos I'd seen online. It got the sun all day long and I do love luxury wooden loungers with padded cushions. It looked out over the mountains of Albania and we spent a lotttt of time lounging around with our books for the week of our stay. I read five!
 
 
{The Villa - the lounge}
We only really used this room one night to cosy up and watch a film when there was a storm outside. It was light and airy, with two little balconies, but we just wanted to be outside most of the time. Heavenly room though! I took a lot of interior inspiration home with me. 
{The villa - the kitchen}
Dream kitchen. And it had everything we could have wanted for cooking including a dishwasher and washing machine. I did all of our washing out there on the last day so it could dry in the sun! I wanted to take everything home with me! Especially those ceramic jelly moulds. It actually reminded us a little of our kitchen with similar colours, the hanging lights and shelves. Although of course this was 10 million times more heavenly than ours. 
{The Villa - Bedroom and Bathroom}
It's a one bed, one bathroom villa that suited us perfectly. We really didn't want to come home. 
 
Loved these tiles in the bathroom. Hashtag I have this thing with floors... 
There were so many little nooks for sitting in the villa, all with the best views out over the sea. 

We cooked some yummy dinners out there, simple ones - we didn't want to be in the kitchen any longer than we had to be. But I love it when we're away and Ben helps me cook. It's different I think from when you're just at home and cooking is a chore. It's romantic when you're away. And there were so many lanterns and tea-lights to twinkle. 
We cooked a BBQ on two nights and sat by the pool. The sky used to turn pink at sunset every evening. 
We went for a walk one evening along a track and found a yummy fig tree bursting with the ripest figs. They were like jam inside! 
A dreamy, dreamy place. I'll share the rest of our week, and favourite beaches/restaurants tomorrow. Part Two is here.
R <3 xx 

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2 comments

  1. Wow this is heaven! Beautiful....

    ReplyDelete
  2. OMG! What a place! I can see why you were able to relax for a whole week. The pool, the kitchen - and those bathroom tiles - all perfection!!

    ReplyDelete

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