Before you book a villa holiday, it can be hard to picture what it actually feels like — especially if you’ve only ever stayed in hotels. What do you do all day? Does it feel like too much effort? Is it really more relaxing?
We think the best way to answer that is just to show you.
Here’s an honest picture of what a week at Villa Antonis tends to look like — not a brochure version, a real one.
Day 1: Arrive, Breathe, Do Almost Nothing
You land in Heraklion or Chania, pick up your hire car, and drive through the early evening light. By the time you reach the villa, the sun is low and the air smells of thyme. You throw open the terrace doors, pour something cold, and sit down.
Nobody has to be anywhere. There’s no welcome briefing, no dinner reservation you have to rush to. Someone makes a supermarket run, someone else works out the pool lighting. You order pizza or pick up souvlaki from the village. You sit outside until late. The first day is always the best first day.
Day 2: First Swim, First Real Morning
You wake up and there’s no queue for the shower, no buffet to navigate. Someone makes coffee. You sit on the terrace and eat whatever you bought at the supermarket yesterday — yogurt, local honey, bread, fruit.
By 9am you’re at the beach. Kalamaki, a short drive from Galatas, is a long sandy stretch with clear water and enough space that it never feels crowded first thing. You swim. You read. You swim again. You’re back at the villa by 1pm, slightly dazed by the sun, and lunch is cheese and olives and cold water on the terrace with the pool to jump into whenever the heat gets too much.
Day 3: A Big Day Out — Balos or Elafonisi
You can’t come to western Crete and not see one of the lagoons. Elafonisi with its pink-tinged sand, or Balos with its extraordinary turquoise water — pick one, go early, stay until early afternoon, drive back. The road to Balos is rough and glorious. The road to Elafonisi is long but straightforward.
You get back tired in the best way. The hot tub gets used for the first time. Dinner is whatever you feel like — or nothing elaborate, because someone had the sense to buy good bread and good cheese and that’s enough.
Day 4: Chania
This is your Chania day. You go in the morning before the heat peaks, park near the market, and wander. The covered market is worth an hour on its own — local honey, olive oil, dried herbs, leather goods, a coffee at the old-fashioned kafeneion inside. Then the Venetian harbour. Then lunch somewhere with a view.
In the afternoon you lose yourselves in the backstreets of the old town — the Splantzia neighbourhood, the Etz Hayyim synagogue, the little galleries and bookshops. You stay for dinner as the lights come on over the harbour. You drive back to the villa late, happy, and planning to come back tomorrow (you won’t, but you’ll want to).
Day 5: The Slow Day
Nothing is planned. This is on purpose.
Someone sleeps in. Someone does lengths of the pool before breakfast. You drive to a small village you noticed on the map and have a coffee in the square. You find a cove by accident down a dirt road. You grill at the villa in the evening — the BBQ terrace gets its proper debut. You open a bottle of Cretan red wine and stay outside until midnight.
This is, quietly, everyone’s favourite day.
Day 6: One More Beach, One More Town
There’s always one more place you meant to get to. Stavros beach, just north of Chania — the amphitheatre cove where Zorba the Greek was filmed — is worth a morning. Or a drive along the Akrotiri peninsula, stopping at one of the clifftop monasteries. Or simply a return to whichever beach you liked best.
Dinner in Galatas village tonight. Taverna Mastrapas or one of the other local spots where the menu is handwritten and the wine comes in a carafe. You realise you’ve barely touched your phone all week.
Day 7: Slower Still
The last full day has a particular quality — slightly elegiac, slightly reluctant to end. You spend most of it at the villa. The pool, the terrace, the morning light. You pack slowly. You swim one more time.
Someone says: “same time next year?”
Ready to See the Villa?
Villa Antoni has four bedrooms, a private pool, hot tub, and BBQ terrace, and sits five minutes from Kalamaki beach and ten minutes from Chania’s old town. It’s available for weekly bookings throughout the summer.
