Building our Love Nest – Folia Agapis
We are Yasmin and John, an Anglo-Persian/German couple who met in Hamburg and have lived 20 wonderful years together, 15 of them in Crete. It was always our dream to come here to live, and we realized it in 2010 when we created Panokosmos. It took two years of our lives to design and have built this wonderful villa, on the top of one of the foothills of the White Mountains, in the midst of the village of Chiliomoudou.
We ran a successful holiday business here for 9 years, offering guests an “away from it all” experience – spectacular panoramic views of mountains, gorges and the sea with peace and tranquillity. And five star food and a wide selection of Cretan wines and cocktails.
But time never stands still, and we needed to move to somewhere a little more “on the beaten track”, close to the shops and facilities we need as we get older, and more “oldie friendly”. So, in 2022 we sold our treasured villa to a lovely Chinese couple who are living their dream there – their “best life” after taking early retirement from their work in Shanghai.
So now we move on to the next stage of our dream, and are building a spectacular house in Vamos, our favourite village in the Apokoronas. In this website you can find out all about it, with a blog in which we track the various stages of its development and construction. We call it “Folia Agapis”, our love nest!
It’s a website which we first built to help to showcase Panokosmos, and we are gradually updating it to show off this next part of our dream! You can see some of the things we love about Crete; and some of the features about our house and home that we value, initially focused on what we did at Panokosmos, but gradually to include those things we are building into Folia Agapis.
Quotes from some of our guests at Panokosmos
If you don’t believe us, take a look here at what our guests liked about it.
What its like to run a holiday bed and breakfast business
Our experiences, running the business at Panokosmos
The Dream comes to life and continues!
First at Panokosmos, our villa in the mountains, and now slowly developing, our new home “Folia Agapis” in Vamos
Living here in Crete - things to do, experience, enjoy
View local potters at work, listen to traditional Cretan music, watch the eagles soar, experience the local market, taste fine Cretan wines, and much much more
Features and the Things we think are important
Now all about Panokosmos, but gradually you’ll see us implement our ideas in the new place.
Panokosmos: The Villa
Read how an estate agent described it
Where this website content has come from
Living here for the last 10 years, and running the business to offer advice to holiday makers, has given us insights into some of the great walks, some virtually out of the door, drives, trips and adventures that the island can provide. Things to see, places to go, experiences to savour. In these pages we share it all. Our favourite tavernas, cafes and bars, and our sampling of the 33 Cretan wineries!
We share our experiences of running an up market exclusive bed and breakfast holiday business from this location. At Panokosmos we installed a solar photovoltaic power supply, we created our own compost and created raised beds to grow our own vegetables.
We’ll be taking those experiences and learning to the new house. We’ll have batteries to give us storage capacity for the electricity we generate, and reduce our dependence on the grid. We’ll also enhance our capacity for self sufficiency in, for example, gathering and storing the rainwater from our roofs.