What we aim to do in this blog is to give a feel about what its like to live in Crete; to tell you a bit about what's happening around us, as it affects us; and to keep you up to date with Panokosmos so that you want to come and visit us!So, what is Panokosmos - well the name, rather freely translated from the Greek, means "On top of the World" - what this place is, and how we want to make our guests feel!
Panokosmos is a 2500m2 site 400m high up in the foothills of the White Mountains, the "Lefka Ori". It is in a tiny - 11 household - village, Xiliomoudou (the name means 1000 peaks), far above the Apokoronas valley. On this site we bought a rather curious little two bedroom house built in 1995, and, after major efforts to try to retain the original layout, ended up demolishing it back to the concrete frame. From this, rather depressing and expensive perspective, we designed and built a house which we feel does justice to the fabulous position and views offered by the site.
This took over two years, and was an all consuming and intense activity. The house is built very precisely to our requirements - we had a set of principles, and every aspect of the house was planned to deliver against them. The result is, well, just amazing!Now we want to share our place and our experience with like minded people - people who love nature, who want to reflect and contemplate, to take time out to review what they are about, and to find new direction for their futures.
We offer an exceptionally personalised and intimate experience, in which we can offer you a tailored programme designed, with you, to give you what you want coming to such a break.
At the moment we are busy trying to complete our website, Panokosmos, to show off what we have, and what our guests can experience.
Its a mammoth effort, as we are doing everything ourselves - building our website, taking our own photos, creating our own descriptions. Gathering our own experiences, writing down our recipes, our tasting notes, getting together our contacts. And, yes, that's in addition to furnishing the place, designing and planting the garden, sorting out the last issues with the building programme, and organising everything.
The plan is to produce a blog at least every month, to describe what we've been up to, what's happened to the place, and what is happening in Crete and Greece all around us. We're going to try to focus on how things affect us, on the ground, to give perspective on what we all hear in the media. And inbetween, some snippets about life and the world around us - like the first snow on the White Mountains on 5 Dec!
So lets see how it goes...
