I've just cried like a baby at your discovering Arillas stories, I also hadn't spotted this topic before, don't know how, I thought I'd read every post on every topic!
Got a day off and I'm supposed to be cleaning and I thought 'I'll just have 10 minutes on the Arillas Forum', an hour later I'm still here....
Back in June 2011 two of my best friends and I wanted a couple of weeks in a quiet, typically Greek resort. We knew we wanted Corfu and booked San Stefanos - Tsaros apartments, they were really good. Round about the fourth or fifth day we went up the hill to see what was at the other side and came across the Akrotiri, stopped for a drink and couldn't close our mouths at the view. While looking down on Arillas I felt drawn to walk down there, my friends weren't too happy about it, it looked a fair distance in that heat.
As we came to the village, I swear my heart was beating faster but I didn't know why. Walking past Yiotas and seeing the pier and the sea felt like coming home. We laid on the beach, my friends looking out to Gravia and me looking inland, thinking 'what is this place, I have to be here?'. Wandering off on
my own to explore I felt a growing sense of peace and when I went back I suggested the Horizon for lunch. Sat there chatting together I couldn't stop saying 'what do you think to it here, I'd love to come back?' They weren't as impressed, thought it too quiet, and I never did convince them to go back with me that holiday. Well....we did walk there and back the road way in 30 degrees...I didn't know about the donkey track back then!
San Stephanos was fine, but the little village over the hill was calling me, so much so that the following year I went with another friend, her for one week and me for two,(being there on my own turned out to be great, not scary at all, I made lots of new Arillas friends) and the rest is history and history in the making.