Holiday residence with wonderful view directly by the sea

We stayed at the Villa Romantik (Apartment A) with our 13 year old son for the first two weeks of August. The highlight for us was the spectacular terrace – it really had the WOW factor. The view was amazing and we spent a lot of time here. It was wonderful to see the small birds of prey hovering in the sky before swooping down. There is also a lovely garden. The platform at the bottom of the (fairly steep) hill was also great for us and we had a lot of fun swimming off the rocks, snorkelling or just reading. The peace and isolation was wonderful. The water was crystal clear but it is advisable to wear swim shoes as there are quite a few sea urchins. The apartment was fine for our needs although a shower curtain would have come in handy. There were no house notes and no guest book so you either have to ask (which we didn't want to have to always do) or find out for yourself. Towels were changed at the end of the first week but not bedlinen.
The apartment was clean and well maintained although there was only one wine glass.

Also I mistakenly thought that the end cleaning rate was 50 euros and it would have been nice to have been corrected when we handed it over.

The walk down to the village through the olive groves is beautiful with fabulous views down to the village and across the gulf and we were lucky enough to see a wild tortoise one morning. It is about 20 minutes and whilst going down was easy it probably would be very tough for young children coming back up. Amaliapolis is a pleasant village with a couple of good tavernas (one with table football), a great bakery, a couple of supermarkets, fish monger, post office, beach bars etc. There is also a small beach. Sourpi (about 15 min drive) has a much better supermarket and very good butcher. Unfortunately we didn’t find out until the second week that there was also an ATM (on the corner by the T junction) and pharmacist (in the village centre off the main through road) and we had driven to Almyros about 15 minutes further on the motorway. (If you are driving from Athens airport you will pass through four tolls - about 2.5 euro each - we never did manage to find out if there was a pass to buy).
Meteora is a must and it took us about 2 hours on good roads. We also went to Makrinitsa, a very pretty spa village in the mountains above Volos. The taverna on the raised walkway behind the church in the main square served great food with wonderful service.

Overall we had a relaxing holiday.