Knossos Estate Villas - Knossos Estate Villas

Great place !

exciting place!!lovely villa!!!amazing view!!luxurious.!!!

fantastic view to the sea.

I have just returned from a holiday with 12 family members in Ariadni Villa on The Knossos Estate to celebrate my Husbands 60th Birthday. We had a fabulous time with a cross section of ages from 4 yrs up to 59. The accommodation was clean, comfortable & spacious. The pool, children’s play areas & grounds were just perfect. Daily visits from Dimitri to check all was well was much appreciated. The local Bakery Bikakis, 5 mins walk away served some great food & drinks. A 20 minute walk into the City of Rethymno, start of the walk no footpath so not really suitable for young children, but Taxis easily available and ranged from €7/10 depending on size. Lidl a short Taxi ride away for self catering groceries. Some of our party walked the Samaria Gorge, arranged by Cretan Travel in Rethymno and with Walking Guide Kosta who was very knowledgable, although a long day, but thoroughly enjoyed by all. A fantastic first visit to Crete.

The villa is large and well appointed, with kitchens and living rooms on both floors, so they can be split into two flats or just used as extra amenities. Cold and hot water comes from a filtration machine, which saves time, money and inconvenience. The maid comes most days, and her husband is often onsite and can get you beers etc which are in a storeroom. The views are also great, with mountains to the rear and the ocean and town to the front. There’s a small general store at the end of the road selling a weird combination unhealthy pastries, cat food, groceries and expensive booze. We did most of our shopping in Carrefour in town. Its location means you’ll need a car or prepare to stump up 8 euros a time to go to the town. As you can see on Google Maps, it’s simply not 1 km from the beach. As the crow flies it’s 2.5km, but you can’t walk or drive that way so it’s a minimum of 7km to what looks like an EU-funded beach in the town, with its catering infrastructure, consistent paving, incongruous palm trees and imported sand. There are nice beaches with food and loungers 20 km to the west, and a lovely cove with a taverna at about 15km. It’s a longer schlep to the East, but that part’s probably best done by boat from Bali. I’d recommend getting a catamaran for the skipper’s local knowledge. The villa is technically close to a taverna, but visiting it requires crossing a busy motorway junction which is sketchy enough by car, let alone foot. Cretans are famously appalling drivers and we saw many accidents and near-misses relating to people coming in hot off the motorway and not coming to a stop until the nose of their car was halfway across a perpendicular lane of traffic, so think twice before venturing out on the roads in or on insubstantial vehicles. This is relevant to the villa because you will need to budget for transport. Even though we had a minibus, we used 3 cabs a minimum of once a day for 7 days because it’s nice to have a drink, so that’s more than 170 Euros. There are actually two villas at the estate, no more than 10 metres apart, so you may have company in the evenings, but we experienced no issues with this – it’s just a little disappointing because you were expecting something else. People seem pretty desperate for cash in Crete at the moment. Political instability has led to a dearth of tourists just when it needs the most cash inputting. Whilst it’s easy to see that there’s a lot of overstaffing, which means staff often loaf lazily around when they could usefully be serving you, the experiences we enjoyed were the ones which exceeded our expectations, and the disappointments came from being fed some BS intended to mask a negative aspect of the service. This villa achieved both. All in all, it’s a great construction, but needs to be upfront about its hidden costs in terms of time, money and amenity to avoid bad reviews.

Not a good experience. Hot water - failed to work for a while during our stay, only to be told later on that it needs to be switched on in the fuse board (that should have been done before we arrive). WiFi- Internet was slow, but what made it worse was the WiFi signals, virtually unusable. Lighting - cheap budget LED lighting in the living space, cold and flickering, not cosy, feels more like a cheap hospital except the light is so dim that you could hardly see each other during dinner. Appliances - drinking hot water tap was broken Air conditioning - absolutely useless, it operates by a systems that detects door closure to turn on, which is good. However the spring mechanism attached to the door that closes the circuit is too stiff due to over painting, therefore closing the door alone wasn’t sufficient to turn the air conditioning on, you have to physically remember to pull this little arm on the back of the door across to turn on the air con. So every time you have someone walking into the room, someone would need to get up to manually turn on the air conditioning. Smell - the place stinks Cleanliness - the place is disgusting, kitchen is sticky Furnishing - ridiculous cheap and tacky Flooring - dirty, too many hard surfaces, couldn’t have a conversation with more than 2 people Kitchen - dangerous, I was cleaning the kitchen wiping the sink with a cloth, a sharp piece of metal cut straight into my finger and sliced it open. Architecture - hopeless, although the landscaping was done ok. The building has structures on the wrong places, dividing sight line between dining and living space. Views - not great on the ground level flat, upper level has some view, but the building is in the middle of construction site and muddy path, it’s not a great setting Luxury? No. Value for money? Regardless of the cost of the hotel, ruining a holiday with a poor quality stay is senseless. I would say it’s poor value for money. Recommend? The building has potential, but the owner needs to invest a little and take away some of the annoying air conditioning features, improve lighting, put some decent furnishing into it, spend a little on cleaners actually cleaning the place... but until then it’s not a luxury villa as advertised. What a shame.

Stayed here for 10 days as a group of 8, had the best time. Loads of space for everyone, and the pool/garden area was amazing. Taxis only about €8 in to town/beach/marina. There is a bakery/cafe/bar about 3-4 minutes walk away called Bikakis, highly recommended. The villa really is as nice as it looks in the pictures!

We stayed at Villa Ariadni for two weeks in August. It is the perfect place to stay with a large family or a group of friends. The villa has an enormous private outdoor pool with a little playground in it and it is surrounded by views of the beach. Inside the villa there are several bathrooms and plenty of space to relax and hang out. The most brilliant part of the stay is that breakfast is delivered every single morning, which includes omelette, cake, breads, fruit and fruit juice and this was such a treat. Lina, the housekeeper pops in every day and helps with any problems or issues or pquestions you have. We met the owner who was also lovely and very helpful. To stay in villa Ariadni you do need a car; it’s a ten minute drive to Rethymno beach, where you can visit the beautiful old town, the fortezza or swim in the sea. It is possible to walk to the bakery, Bikakis, from the villa. I highly recommend the villa.