Aresti Mountain Resort comprises five villas and we booked the largest one, Villa Ira. We normally stay at 5-star hotels for our summer holiday, but we did not expect these villas to be 5-star quality or to receive such good service. We were pleasantly surprised by the attention to detail and high quality of everything in the villa, and found it comparable to some of the best hotels we've stayed in.
The photos on various web sites portray the villas very accurately, although the kitchen in Villa Ira is better than it looks in the photos.
The air conditioning is extremely effective and quiet, and you can leave it on at night without it keeping you awake. The shutters block out all light very effectively, so if you're used to being woken by your young children early in the morning, you might be able to sleep in a lot later than usual!
The upper level is supported by a single layer of floorboards, which are extremely well polished when you first arrive. The maid is incredibly thorough and very friendly, and she takes her time every day to make sure everything is spotless and tidy. On our last day, which was a changeover day for many of the villas, we were amazed by the very thorough cleaning by the staff we saw going on, including pressure-washing all outdoor areas.
Bathroom towels are changed daily, but you do need to bring your own pool towels. The pool is cleaned early every morning by the staff, and is slightly larger in Villa Ira than the other villas. Clouds form over the mountains to the east of the villas, but they rarely block out the sun, and never in the afternoon when the sun shines from the west (coast direction).
Unlike the other villas, the pool at Villa Ira gets the morning sun, so it gets warmer earlier in the day. The small children's pool at every villa with a depth of 40cm is perfect for small children, as it's warmer than the main pool and allows children to play and have fun in a safer area.
The satellite television is quite an elaborate set-up which consists of one dish pointed at Hotbird 13E with four receiver boxes all located in Villa Ira, which serve all five villas. Therefore four satellite channels are available at any one time across all five villas, which can be changed by the occupants of Villa Ira. When we arrived, they were tuned mainly to Greek channels, so after consulting the very helpful owner, we changed one receiver to BBC World which also benefited British guests in the other villas. We were very happy with this, as we don't like to watch much television on holiday apart from one decent English news channel to keep us up to date with what's going on in the world.
The villa is advertised with internet access, which should be requested in advance if required. This comprises the owner's netbook and a Cosmote 3G/GPRS PCMCIA card. There is no 3G coverage on this side of the island from any network, so you have to settle for 2G (GPRS) at a speed of 56kbps.
This is the best mobile internet that the infrastructure can provide on this side of the island, so it's a good effort by the owner.
Unlike Wind which has very good coverage in the villa, Cosmote's signal is very patchy, so I put the owner's netbook in a spare bedroom and configured it as a wireless router (all in Greek!), so I could wirelessly use my own laptop anywhere in the villa without having to install the Cosmote software on my own laptop. This set-up worked very well for our entire stay.
Six mountain bikes were provided for our use to cycle around the farm. I tried this once, but there wasn't a lot to see apart from nice views. In fact, it must be the quietest farm I've ever seen so the most you'll see or hear is the odd lorry visiting at night, which happened only twice during our whole week in the villa.
The owners are extremely helpful and accommodating, and on our last day, our flight didn't leave until 21:10, so the owners kindly let us use the pool and bathroom of Villa Ariadni for the rest of the day. This made us realise that what a good decision it had been to pay a little extra for Villa Ira, as although the other villas are the same quality, Villa Ira is much bigger and well worth the extra money we had paid.
The only way to improve the villas would be the bathrooms, which are comparatively small in relation to the other spacious rooms in Villa Ira.
The lighting in the bathrooms is rather dim, and the shower curtain is made from porous fabric rather than a waterproof curtain or a solid folding screen, so water passes through it. The shower is a telephone-style shower head running on a hose from a mixer tap, but there is no bracket on the wall to place the shower head into when standing up having a shower. However the water pressure is surprisingly very strong given the remote location of the villas, and a consistent temperature.
The only problem with these villas is that they're so comfortable and relaxing that they make you reluctant to go and see the rest of Zakynthos.
Apart from local shops, we ventured out only twice, once to supermarkets and a beach near Laganas, and the other time to see the shipwreck beach just up the coast from the villa. There are no proper supermarkets west of the mountains, only small shops selling local produce, including very cheap local wine which is worth trying.
Some advice: Don't leave any food lying around in the kitchen or dropped on the floor, otherwise it will attract ants. When going out, beware that if you take the key fob out of the electricity slot, everything you've deliberately left switched on (dishwasher, washing machine, battery chargers
etc) will have its power cut off a few minutes after you go out.
We got a very good deal on car hire from Budget Zakynthos, who gave us very good service.
