Eleonas Villas And Apartments Reviews

We travelled independently for the first time having booked the accomodation, flights and car hire via the internet.
We flew from Gatwick to Kalamata with First Choice (who were superb landed early both ways!) picked up our car and after a 45 mins drive we arrived in Gialova.
We'd never been to this area before so didn't really know what to expect but we were very pleasantly surprised! Gialova is a wonderful little seaside town with about 6/7 tavernas all serving excellent Greek meals and 1 Italian restaurant which although a little more expensive was lovely. There are also 3 shops selling groceries and a few touristy items. Some buildings were just being finished when we left so they may be turned in to more shops.
Scattered around the hillsides are an abundance of small villas and apartments mostly hidden by olive trees, you just wouldn't know that they are there! It's not commercialised at all and has a very laid back feel about it.
The thing we loved most was the distinct lack of Brits! The only Tour Operators who go here are quite expensive - Sunvil, Simply Travel, Filoxenia, Simpsons travel and they only have a handful of accomodation between them. The few Brits we met had also travelled independently. There were lots of Italians, Greeks, Americans, Germans and Scandinavians, We were definitely in the minority which was wonderful. This didn't worry our 7 year old son he played happily on the beach and made friends with a little Greek boy, also made friends with some German children and the only 2 English children back at our apartments.

We Stayed at the Eleonas Villas (eleonas com) and had a 1 bedroom apartment with air conditioning (included in the price) and shared a fab pool with the other apartments. It was never busy and a lot of the time we had it to ourselves! The view from our apartment across the Bay of Navarino was fantastic and the sunsets were just amazing. We paid 44 euros per night for this accomodation which worked out to be £430 for the fortnight (You couldn't get a week in a caravan in cornwall for that price!!). Yiannis and Inge who own it were so friendly as was everybody we met in resort.

It was a 10 min walk to the town beach but we preferred Golden beach (which we could have walked to but it was too hot so much easier to drive!) It was lovely, extremely long but the bit up by the snack bar was probably the best - golden sand and no stones/shingle at all. It was also the only bit of the beach that was organised, just a handful of sunbeds and that was the only beach we saw them on which was good as we hate organised beaches!
Our favourite beach however was Voidikilia, (we could see the sand dunes from our apartment) it is a simply stunning horseshoe bay of beautiful sand and clear water with no sunbeds or snack bars allowed - heaven! On the other side of the sand dunes is the Gialova lagoon a huge area which is a haven for wildlife. The African Chameleon lives there and it is the only place in Europe it can be found! In fact we saw one crossing the car park at Golden beach and managed to get a photo it was lovely.
Pylos was our closest town and it was very nice typical Greek with a few tourist shops, Methoni a bit further down is lovely in fact we could quite easily holiday there, it has a good feel about it and is not commercialised at all. The castle is huge and def worth a look around.

There are lots of archaeological sites around the area - we went to Nestors palace about a 10 min drive away and also drove up to Olympia which took over 2 hours but was well worth it. The scenery driving up was beautiful and the road was so quiet! Olympia is an amazing place and I'm so glad we went. It is very hot there especially on the running track as no shade so take lots of water. There is a very reasonably priced snack kiosk just outside though which sells pretty much anything.

We absolutely loved it in Gialova it's a lovely little uncommercialised seaside village even a bit tatty (it was a wine producing area and there are disused factories about) but its everything we like about Greece. Developments are taking place but at a slow pace and maybe in 5 -10 years it will be in the mainstream tour operators brochures but I really hope not!

As we loved it so much we've booked again for this July!

PS We have been going to Greece since 1989 and this is the first time ever that we have stayed in an apartment where we can flush the loo paper! No bins - wonderful!