When I’m looking for a holiday rental, finding the good balance between traditional lodgings and super clean Ikea-furnished apartments isn’t always easy. The more you travel the more you appreciate when a place has unique details and make you feel like you’re close to a region’s identity. Today’s house is a good answer to my travel fantasies.
We’re on the island of Rhodes, with its charter flights and its notoriously touristic coasts. Some people even told me: “you’re going to Rhodes, aren’t you scared?”.
I had seen the pictures of the house and I thought to myself: there’s no way it’s in a touristic-overbuilt zone. I have this rule which is that when you find a very tasteful and personal place – a hotel or a rental – you can generally bet that it’s gonna be in a nice area, simply because the kind of people who design these places usually think those things through. Anyway, I was actually right. The house was located in the small village of Koskinou who turned out to be not only postcard-charming but with barely no other tourists in sight.
The house is in a small alley, in the historic center of the village where all the houses have this Greek neo-classic style, with a mix of columns and bright colors. They all have a decorated door that opens on a courtyard.
Here’s the infamous courtyard, it’s really the center of the house, with an access to the kitchen, the living room and to the roof. There were huge amphoras here and there that I kind of fell in love with.
The living room is very spacious and has with very high ceilings with a skylight. On the side on the room they kept the raised spaces where people used to sleep. You can use the spots to sleep or just to hang out and read.
The furniture around the house is pretty simple, what’s really making a difference is those white painted wood cut-outs in the living room and the one-hundred-years-old pebble floors.
Breakfast and lunch on the courtyard table. There were even some Greek mezze in the fridge for us when we arrived, it’s the kind of detail that I appreciate a lot!
In summer, the roof terrace is scorching hot until 6pm. But when the sun finally cools down it’s time for you – and the cats – to enjoy the breeze and the view. Watching the stars from there at night isn’t too bad either.
