The temptation with any villa holiday is to plan every day. The temptation with Vasiliki is to plan none of them. The truth, as usual, is somewhere between the two. What follows is not an itinerary so much as a framework: a way of organising seven days that leaves room for the unplanned moments that, in the end, tend to be the ones you remember.
Day one belongs to the villa. Arrive, unpack, resist the urge to explore immediately. Walk to the harbour for a late lunch instead. Sit at a waterfront table, order whatever the waiter recommends, and watch the bay do what it does in the afternoon: the wind arriving, the sails filling, the light sharpening over the mountains. This is reconnaissance, not leisure. You are learning the rhythm of the place, and the place has a rhythm worth learning.
Day two is for the water. Spend the morning on Vasiliki's beach while it is calm and flat. If you or anyone in your party has ever wanted to try windsurfing or sailing, this is the morning to book a lesson: the schools are excellent and the conditions before noon are forgiving. After lunch, take the water taxi to Agiofili and swim in water that will recalibrate your expectations of what the colour blue can do. Return by boat as the afternoon wind picks up. Dinner at the harbour.
Day three: the mountains. Drive up to Karya and Englouvi in the morning, when the air is still cool and the villages are at their most unhurried. Buy lentils in Englouvi: they are famous for a reason. Have coffee under the plane tree in Karya. On the way back down, stop at one of the viewpoints on the western ridge and look at the coastline from above. The scale of it, from this height, is genuinely surprising. Return to the villa for a late swim and a slow evening.
Day four is for the western beaches. Porto Katsiki deserves its reputation, and the earlier you arrive the more of it you will have to yourself. The steps down to the sand are steep but manageable. Spend the morning there, then drive north to Kathisma: a longer, broader beach with a good canteen and the kind of easy, all-day energy that Porto Katsiki's drama does not quite permit. This is a full day at the coast. Pack accordingly: water, sun protection, a book, low expectations for productivity.
Day five: the island hop. Take the morning ferry from Nidri to Meganisi, or the boat to Kioni on Ithaca. Either journey takes less than two hours and rewards generously. Swim, eat, walk, sit. The point is not to see everything but to feel the difference: the way each island has its own tempo, its own light, its own version of the same olive-and-sea vocabulary. Return in the late afternoon. Dinner in Vasiliki will feel, after a day away, like coming home.
Day six is for doing nothing, deliberately. Stay at the villa. Swim in the pool. Read on the terrace. Walk to the bakery for fresh bread and eat breakfast slowly. This is not a wasted day: it is the day the holiday has been building towards. The day when you stop doing and simply are. If you feel restless, walk to the harbour for an ice cream. That is the upper limit of ambition for day six.
Day seven, the last full day, belongs to the evening. Spend it however the morning suggests: a final swim at Agiofili, a last drive through the hills, a long coffee at your harbour table. But save the evening. Find the best table you can at the waterfront. Order the fish. Order the wine. Watch the light do what it has done every evening since you arrived, and know that you are watching it for the last time this trip. It does not matter that you will come back. What matters is this particular evening, this particular light, this particular glass of wine in this particular place.
Azzura Villas is where each of these days begins and ends: the terrace that frames the morning, the pool that punctuates the afternoon, and the quiet that greets you at the end of every well-spent day in Vasiliki.
