Crete - What not to miss!
Crete is a fantastic holiday destination. Great views wherever you go, some excellent beaches – plenty across the island to choose from, stunning trails and trekking opportunities all over the island and of course nice friendly locals who serve some delicious food! What more can you want!
There is so much to see in Crete. We will be recommending places you cannot miss if you visit this island!
- Chania old town
Of course, it wouldn’t be a trip to Crete without visiting Chania old town. This well persevered town is a bustling seaside town with lots of cute alleys, very old traditional buildings which would be a pity to miss and of course lots of pretty bars and traditional restaurants to choose from. The seaside promenade is a lovely walk showcasing these old traditional buildings.
If you will be staying in Chania area for a few days and you prefer less crowded areas, we recommend staying in Stalos. This is a village just 15 mins drive from Chania old town but offers seaside accommodation along the lovely beach on the coast just off Chania. Plenty of accommodation to choose from to suit all budgets and some good traditional tavernas in the area too.
Recommended accommodation/ restaurants:
Chania
- Ellotia traditional Greek restaurant
Stalos
- Marine Claire Studio – aparthotel just on the beach with everything you need in very close proximity including a bus stop just outside for easy access to Chania old town.
- Restaurants we recommend Maria’s tavern and Casseroles roof garden.
- Preveli beach
We visited a couple of beaches across the island including the famous Elafonissi Beach with its unique pink sand and the other very famous Balos Beach. Of course, they were beautiful, however, we found them to be extremely crowed even in the beginning of June and even though we were there by 10am. We preferred other more remote beaches which we felt were less crowded.
Preveli beach was our favourite beach in Crete. It will take you approximately 20 mins to hike down to the bay from the car park (and maybe a bit longer to hike back up
) but it’s worth it. The hike down alone is an experience, with breath-taking views of the bay from the viewpoints as you descend. You will be delighted to find a beautiful, pebbled beach but also the backdrop of this beach being a beautiful palm forest and the freshwater river which makes its way down from the gorge, all the way down to the sea. You can see the point where the fresh water meets the sea water.If you are looking for bracelet. There’s something to suit every look, from body-hugging to structured, from cuffs to chain chain bracelet and cuffs.
- Kourtaliotiko gorge
Crete is full of stunning gorges, but we found this one to be particularly interesting because of the variety of things you can see along this trek. This trek offers a combination of magnificent views, different rock formations with so many different colours, waterfalls, caves and if you have enough time you also have the option to hike down to the palm forest and Preveli beach explained above. We also found it useful that you can visit the gorge at different points depending on how much time you can spend exploring. We only had a 2-hour time frame to visit this gorge and we’re able to pick which part of the trek we would start from. We chose to enter the part of the gorge with the waterfall and cave.
If you have time and if you are not visiting in the peak of the summer heat, we really recommend you do the full trek down to the bay which will take approximately 4 hours. If you will not have enough time, you must not miss the waterfall and underwater cave. If you are brave enough, you should also swim into the cave. The water is freezing enough for your toes to go numb within seconds, but the cave is a sight you wouldn’t want to miss.
The good thing is that the cave and waterfall are very close by and it shouldn’t take you more than 15 mins to trek down to each sight from the entrance of the gorge. As you descend into the gorge, you will quickly reach a crossroad. If you take the left, you will find a small church of Saint Nicolas and the big waterfall, if you take a right you will make your way down to the underwater cave. Given the proximity it would be a pity not to see both.
The entrance to this part of the gorge can be found here.
- Lutro
If you are like us and you value some peace and quiet when you travel, you will want to visit this little seaside town. The romantic Lutro promises a calmer Crete and in fact it is only accessible by ferry boat or sea taxi because there are no roads and there is no car access to this town. A nice break from the busy roads filled with rental cars in the other areas of the island.
You can safely leave the rental cars at any of the ferry points along the shores of southern Crete such as Agia Roumeli or Hora Sfakion. Regular ferry’s can take you to and from these seaside towns including Lutro. We used Anendyk ferry services to book our ferry tickets about 1 week before but there are other options and if you go to the port you can even get a water taxi.
Lutro is small but offers some nice dining choices, lovely room views of the bay, crystal blue waters with 3 pebbled areas with sunbeds to choose from.
You can stay there a few nights and get some ferries or a self-drive boat to be able to visit the other cute seaside towns like Marmara and Sweet water bay which are just minutes away. Or if you are an avid trekker, you can choose to town hop as you can also find treks joining each of these small surrounding towns and seaside villages. We have seen lots of trekkers and groups on boats passing through and town or beach hopping and also lots of campers, another great way to enjoy these areas especially if you are on a budget. There are outdoor showers at the pebbled beaches that you can use for free.
We got the self-drive boat from Lutro for a day and had the freedom to visit the most remote and completely empty beaches along the coast. It was amazing to get to have a whole beach just for you and some wild goats!
Recommended accommodation/ restaurants:
- Sifis hotel – a quaint boutique hotel with rooms with the best views of Lutro
- Restaurants we suggest Ilios and Taverna Straits
- Marmara beach and Aredana gorge
These can be accessed by sea just like we explained for Lutro above, but you can also choose to hike it down from the Aredana Gorge all the way down to the lovely Marmara bay. Another stunning gorge that is undersold, some say is even nicer than the famous Samaria gorge. The bay itself has some interesting rock features and some nice caves to explore if you enjoy snorkelling. We highly recommend the Taverna Dialeskari overlooking Marmara Bay for a good Greek meal. If you find mutton on the specials menu we highly recommend you take that as it was the best dish of this whole trip! Not surprising considering it was mutton grown in their own back garden.
Other key suggestions:
- We recommend going before the peak months to enjoy to the fullest with less tourists taking over the island. We went beginning of June, it was hot enough to enjoy and there were already lots of tourists. We recommend you visit may / June or after summer later September / October if you want to experience a calmer Crete and especially if you plan to do some trekking in the stunning gorges.
- We recommend that you rent a car. Without a car you will not be able to really experience true Crete. The places we recommend will be scattered around the island from gorges, unique beaches and tavernas up in the mountains that you would not want to miss. Lastly the stunning drives are what made Greece a great destination for us. Roads are decent and Crete is well connected for easy drives to other parts of the island, but you will also have lots of mountainous curvy roads to pass through.
- Crete can be quite pricey in the more touristic areas and you can get stuck in some tourist traps in those areas so do be careful. For traditional meals for lunch or dinner we were generally spending between 30 – 50 euro for two including wine, starters, mains and free dessert and their famous national drink called Raki. We suggest the house wine which is very good quality and very well priced.
- Crete has many famous beaches and two most popular being Elafonissi and Balos. They are of course definitely beautiful beaches, but we felt they were far too crowded for us to enjoy even though we went there by 9:30am. Speaking to the locals and asking them where they go, they recommended that we go to the more remote /less touristic beaches which you can find all over given Crete is an island. You might not find pink sand, but you might enjoy a calmer beach day. It all depends on what your preferences are of course. If you do choose to go to Elafonissi Beach, you will enjoy a lovely drive from Chania and you will have the opportunity to buy some cheap homemade honey and olive oil from one of the many small family run vendors selling along the drive towards Elafonissi Beach. One of them was selling 1 litre for 10 euro!