We were invited to experience Mousses via Simpson Travel. We’ve written this review exactly as we found it, and we loved it so much we’ve booked to go back next year.
Why Mousses doesn’t feel like a normal villa stay
First things first, Mousses Villas gets the balance perfectly right between relaxation for adults and brilliant for kids better than anywhere we’ve come across to date.
It’s a small resort, sitting somewhere rather uniquely between a small all-inclusive hotel and a self-catering villa rental. The pleasant twist with Mousses is the childcare on offer and concierge support when you want it, total privacy when you don’t, and enough thoughtful touches (a teddy on the bed, wine kept in the taverna fridge with your name on it) that it feels unbelievably personal.
By day three, our eighteen-month-old R was splashing round the toddler pool on his own steam and trotting into the kids club without a backward glance. He was pretty much adopted by the 4 and 5 year olds staying on site and despite being a relatively private family we loved spending time around the shared pool and at the family BBQ evening with other parents. We can see why so many families return year after year, and after one week there, we joined them in rebooking for next year.
In this review:
At a glance
- Best for: families with babies, toddlers and younger primary-aged children
- Best bit: the childcare (which runs mornings or afternoons), evening babysitting and thoughtful baby equipment
- Worth knowing: no washing machine in two-bed villas, and tourist tax is much higher for three-bed villas. Childcare is £250 per child in school holidays or free outside of them
- Would we return? Yes, we’ve already booked again
Who is Mousses best for?
Mousses is ideal if you:
- have a baby, toddler or child up to 11 (but we saw a couple of older kids there loving it, they just didn’t go to the crèche)
- want nanny-level, proper childcare in the morning or afternoons but don’t want a huge resort
- like having the space or your own villa (and the 3-beds also have a private pool) but great facilities on-site
- are travelling with grandparents (R’s granny joined us and it worked well)
- don’t mind driving to beaches rather than staying directly on one
It’s probably not the best fit if you want nightlife, teenage-focused facilities, or a large resort.
If you’re deciding between Mousses and a traditional all-inclusive family resort, the biggest difference is that here you’ll spend most of your time in your own villa or the pool which is shared amongst 12 villas (although 2 of them have a large private pool) rather than around a busy hotel complex. It is quieter, more personal (and family-run) and not at all commercial. It’s also specifically toddler-friendly in a way we haven’t found elsewhere: the gated grounds, the toddler pool depth, and the Hatchlings creche taking babies from 6 months all feel designed with exactly that age in mind.
How to get to Lefkada and Mousses
Mousses sits on the eastern side of Lefkada, reached via Aktion Airport near Preveza, about 20-30 minutes away by road. There’s no ferry involved: Lefkada is connected to the mainland by a floating bridge, so you drive straight across. For restaurant recommendations, beaches and things to do beyond the resort, our Lefkada with kids guide covers the whole island in more depth than we can here.
The resort and villas
Mousses is a small, fenced resort of family villas in Lefkada, sized for around 12 families at once. There are 10 two-bed villas (some detached, some semi-paired) plus a handful of three-beds, both detached with a private pool.
The villas themselves are painted in the pale pink typical of the Ionian islands, dotted through olive trees and sub-tropical planting, and there’s an on-site massage room too, if you want to book a treatment during nap time.
The whole site is gated, so once you’re in, the kids can roam without you tracking every step. There’s gates into the pool area and the kids club, which adds to the sense of family-orientation.
With only around 8 other families there during our stay, it felt more like a small community than a hotel. We got chatting to a few of them by the pool, and none of them were on their first visit either, one couple told us they’d been coming back every summer for five years running, and we met others on their second and third trips.
Castor Villa: our three-bed review
We had the Castor Villa: three bedrooms, a private pool, and a layout that worked well for three generations under one roof. The main en suite has a large corner bath, and the second en suite and main bathroom both have showers. The second double bedroom can be reached either through the kids’ room from the main house, or via its own outside door, which meant his granny could get to bed past R’s bedtime without tiptoeing through his room.
On arrival, every child gets a rucksack, rash vest and teddy left on their bed, which was a lovely touch. R still sleeps with his buddy “Simpson”!
Simpson Travel infant pack
This is where Mousses properly impressed us. Every villa comes with:
- Wooden cot with bedding (123cm x 63cm, 56cm from cot rail to mattress top)
- Highchair, baby bath, changing mat, bedside lamp
- Child toilet seat and child step
- Boxes of toys in the bedroom and living room, with more available to borrow from the creche (books and DVDs too)
- Bag of beach toys, plus a parasol and cool box for beach trips
- A Tonie box, with extra characters borrowable from the crèche, and you can swap characters daily at kids club
- Bottle steriliser and bottle warmer if needed
- Kids’ plastic cutlery, plates and cups, plus a hand blender
- Bed guards, baby gate into the kids room, table corner protectors and plug socket protectors
On request, you can also get a baby monitor (sound only, no camera), a nightlight, a table booster seat, an infant bouncy chair, and there are two fold-up pushchairs (not recliners) to borrow.
The only gap we noticed was no cupboard or oven locks to keep R out of the kitchen units. Other safety touches were spot on: the knife drawer, for instance, is kept up on a shelf above the fridge, well out of reach.
Welcome pack
Each villa also gets a grocery welcome pack on arrival, including a litre of milk, orange juice, a bottle of white wine, six eggs, toast bread and fresh bread, two large bottles of water, two children’s yoghurts and two small Kellogg’s cereals per child, tzatziki, soft cheese spread, bananas, tomatoes, cucumber, biscuits, crisps, butter, English breakfast tea and ground coffee for the cafetiere. The kitchen is also stocked with basics like foil, cling film, washing up liquid, store cupboard staples, dishwasher tablets and mosquito tablets and machines, so you don’t need a big supermarket shop on day one.
Pools at Mousses
The main pool is large (with various pool floats), and the toddler pool is a really good depth for building confidence, coming to just below the armpits on R at 18 months.
He built confidence in it fast, and within a couple of days was walking round it happily on his own while we sat close by.
There’s no beach on site, but several are a short drive away, ranging from fully-facilitied to nothing at all, which we liked having the choice of. See our favourite beaches on Lefkada in our destination guide.
What to know before you book
Even somewhere we’ve booked to return to had a few things worth flagging:
- No washing machine in the two-bed villas (laundry service available at €35 a bag) – not a show stopper, especially for a week
- No cupboard or oven locks in the villa to keep a toddler out of the kitchen units
- No beach directly on site, so you’re driving to reach one
- Tourist tax jumps from €2.50 a day in a two-bed villa to €15 a day in a three-bed – not the choice of Simpson Travel and Greece is a relatively poor economy so it’s justifiable in my eyes
A typical day at Mousses
Like we were, you may be wondering what does a villa holiday with childcare actually look like day to day?
For us, a fairly typical day ran something like this: a slow breakfast on the villa terrace, then a morning at one of the nearby beaches. Lunch was often at the on-site taverna or brought back to the villa, followed by R’s nap. From about 3pm, R went off to kids club until 5:30pm, although it runs 2-5:30pm if you book the afternoon slot like we did.
I’ll come onto the kids club in a minute but these hours in the afternoon were amazing (and unexpected). It’s been a long time I felt genuinely relaxed reading by the pool for more than an hour at a time – the combination of nap and the kids club was a real luxury when you’re constantly running around after a climbs-everything toddler!
Our evening were varied: some nights we ate at the taverna, and twice we used the nanny service and went out for dinner. One of those nights Fifi, who by then R knew well from kids club, texted us mid-meal to say he’d gone to sleep without a peep! I guess five days of seeing the same friendly face helped, plus a full day of swimming, beach and an afternoon at kids club “baking” cookies had clearly worn him out! On Wednesday Mousses also run a big family BBQ, more on that below.
The other thing we did most days was pop to the garden of the kids club which was open for us to use whenever we wanted. With an 18 month old toddler it was perfect for burning off some energy, with the classic Little Tikes cozy coupe and other outdoor toys.
Reception also has a small adult book library, should you get through more books than planned (very doable at Mousses in my opinion!).
Mousses kids club and creche
The childcare is run under Simpson Travel‘s ‘Simpson Kids’ programme, and it’s one of the best-organised set-ups we’ve come across. The team is led by Wendy, Concierge and Childcare Manager, working alongside a small team of nannies (Mousses’ name for creche and kids club staff), several of whom return year after year, with backgrounds in schools, Montessori settings and childcare across Europe. It costs £250 per child during school holidays and is free outside of them, and private in-villa babysitting is available at €20 an hour.
This is the bit that surprised me the most about Mousses. Before we went I genuinely thought R would go to the kids club for an hour some days, firmly thinking ‘why go on holiday to put your child in a kids club’. Mousses entirely changed my mind on this and this was largely thanks to the intimate setting, nanny-style childcare and importantly the limit of 12 villa families being able to attend.
Sessions are split by age into three rooms: Hatchlings (roughly 6 months to 3 years), Turtles and Dolphins (older children up to 11), with 4 morning and afternoon sessions through the week and a Thursday evening ‘movie night’ in place of the daytime sessions. Activities are properly planned and vary by room and day: think water tag and shipwreck escape rooms for the older kids, tie-dye and messy play for the toddlers, and a Friday ‘Simpson Party’ to send everyone off for the weekend.
We kept R’s first visit on the Monday short (about 90 minutes) since it was his first time and while he was unsure for a few minutes, by pickup he didn’t want to leave and had clearly made some friends (aka some very cute 4 and 5 year olds who loved him).
Every session after that he trotted in without so much as a look back. The other thing I loved was that it was the same two nannies, Anna and Fifi, looking after him every session, and we think that continuity made a real difference to how quickly he settled in.
Food at Mousses, Lefkada
The on-site taverna is run by resort owners Eleni & Zois and is open daily except Thursdays, when kids club runs an evening session instead and most parents go out for dinner by themselves.
When it’s open, if you’d rather not leave the villa, meals can also be delivered to your door, for no extra charge. My mother-in-law got a sea bass dinner delivered one night when she was looking after R while we went out for dinner and it meant she could eat restaurant-quality on the terrace.
Mains on the menu when we visited included chicken souvlaki (15,50€), grilled king prawns (19,50€), traditional beef stew (17,50€), spaghetti bolognese (14,50€) and sea bass fillet (21,00€). The kids’ menu covers mac and cheese, penne with tomato or bolognese sauce, fish fingers, chicken nuggets and a ham and cheese toastie (which R enjoyed for lunch a few times), plus they do artisan ice cream by the scoop. We had a few lunches there consisting of Greek salads, pitta bread and tzatziki.
One tip we picked up a little too late from another guest: if you buy a bottle of wine at the bar / taverna, they will keep it in the fridge with your name on it, which works out cheaper than buying by the glass each time.
Wednesday is the big family BBQ night, when kids aged 3 and up sit at tables outside the kids club with the nannies (although under-3s need to eat with their parents which is a little less enjoyable).
Luckily we had a third adult with us, so my mother-in-law took R to bed and sat on our terrace while he slept, and we ended up staying at the BBQ until 11pm with wine and our lovely neighbours, with the nannies looking after their older kids the whole time. I did notice one of the other families put their 2 and a half year old to bed and used a monitor – obviously that’s personal choice but it shows some found it safe and comfortable within the gates.
The team at Mousses
Wendy met us at the airport, and even though we hadn’t booked flights or a hire car through Simpson Travel, she still had water waiting and a big smile to welcome us. Our villa wasn’t quite ready on arrival, so we had lunch at the taverna while it was finished.
Throughout the week Wendy gave us restaurant recommendations and personally booked every dinner out for us, securing good tables each time, on top of running the whole childcare operation. We’ve written more about Simpson Travel as a company, and how the wider Simpson Kids programme works across their other destinations, in a separate review.
Not exactly staff but worth knowing that there are a couple of resort cats around the site. The one who’d clearly adopted our villa was called Domino, very gentle, and spent most afternoons asleep on a lounger with my mother-in-law! It’s impossible to stay anywhere in Greece without cats coming up to your table – and we really didn’t mind when we saw how gentle they were.
Mousses prices: how much do the villas cost?
If you’re searching for Mousses prices, here’s what to expect. They vary a lot by week and villa type, so treat the figures below as a guide rather than a live quote, and always check the exact price for your dates before booking. Based on 2027 pricing, the two-bed semi-detached villas start from around £960 a week in low season, rising to roughly £3,590 at the peak of summer. The detached three-bed villas with a private pool, like the Castor Villa we stayed in, start from around £1,410 a week in low season, rising to around £6,190 in peak school holiday weeks. There are only two of these three-bed villas with a private pool, so they tend to sell out faster than the two-beds.
| Month | Two-bed villa (from, per week) | Three-bed villa with pool (from, per week) |
|---|---|---|
| May | £960 | £1,660 |
| June | £1,960 | £3,510 |
| July | £2,590 | £4,690 |
| August | £2,090 | £3,240 |
| September | £960 | £1,610 |
| October | £760 | £1,410 |
As you’d expect, the biggest jumps in Mousses prices happen around the UK summer holidays. Both villa types get significantly more expensive from mid-July through August, and you can save well over half the peak rate by travelling in May, June, September or October instead. The three-bed Castor Villa costs roughly 60-70% more than the two-bed at the same time of year, but there are only two three-bed villas with a private pool at Mousses, so those weeks sell out fastest, especially across August.
There are still some pockets of availability for 2026 too if you want to travel sooner, though the figures above are based on 2027 prices.
Overall, Mousses isn’t an overly cheap holiday, particularly during school holidays. But once you factor in the amount of baby equipment provided, the quality of the childcare, the welcome groceries and the quality of the pool, we thought it offered good value compared with booking anything of a similar quality elsewhere. We’ve stayed in a lot of family accommodation over the last couple of years, from luxury hotels to self-catering villas, but Mousses is somewhere we won’t forget. If you fancy seeing it for yourselves, you can check Mousses Villas availability here, or see Simpson Travel’s current late availability across their wider portfolio.
I hope I haven’t missed anything but feel free to drop us a message on Instagram if you’d like to ask us anything.
If you’re planning a family holiday Lefkada trip like ours, you might also find these useful: our Lefkada with kids guide, our Simpson Travel review, and our guide to using a car seat abroad.
Allie, Jack & R x
This post contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Our stay at Mousses was a gifted experience in exchange for a review, but all opinions are our own and we received no special treatment while out in Greece.
Mousses villas: frequently asked questions
Yes. The creche (Hatchlings) takes babies from around 6 months, and every villa comes with a full infant pack, including a cot, highchair, steriliser and baby bath.
No. It’s entirely optional, and priced separately (free outside school holidays, €250 per child within them), so you can use as much or as little of it as you like.
Yes, from around 6 months in the Hatchlings room. If your baby is younger than that, the in-villa babysitting service is available instead at €20 an hour.
We’d say yes. There’s no beach directly on site, and reaching the wider island, restaurants and other beaches is much easier with your own car.
If you’re a couple or small family, one of the two-bed villas will suit. If you’re travelling with an extra adult, like grandparents, and want your own pool, look at the two detached three-bed villas specifically, since not all the three-beds have a private pool.