On this page you will find some useful information on the Island of Crete and a few suggestions / options on what to do and where to base yourself.
Overview
- Crete is a BIG Island, it's 160 miles long and 35 miles wide
- It is very mountainous with the largest mountains reaching around 2500m
- The 3 key towns/cities are Chania (West), Rethymno (Central) and Heraklion (East).
- It has two International Airports - Chania & Heraklion
- The wedding is in Rethymno which is roughly an equal distance between the two airports/cities of Chania & Heraklion. You can therefore use both airports to get to Rethymno (about an hour's drive)
The Map
Below is a custom Google Map of Crete - on it you will find all the locations mentioned in this site including hotels, towns, villages, airports, bars, restaurants, sights etc etc...
Things to Do / Itineraries
Here you will find some suggestions/ideas partly stolen from Guide Books; partly from our holiday earlier this year BUT mainly copy and pasted from the Internet (:
2-3 Days
Get to Rethymno and base yourself in the Old Town (see Accommodation options).
Rethymno is a good place to stay for a few days - you can wander the old town, check out the harbor, eat in nice restaurants and also visit the old Venetian Fortress.
See 'Rethymno' TAB for more information on Rethymno.
4-6 Days
The best option would be to fly into Chania and stay there for 2-3 days before moving on to Rethymno. Spending all of your time in Rethymno would probably be too long and you would most likely start to get bored. The other city, Heraklion, is from all accounts best avoided, (it's usually described as an ugly concrete sprawl).
Chania
Chania, (like Rethymno), has an Old Town with some great bars and restaurants. The harbor area and lighthouse are also very good. In fact for my money Chania Old Town is even nicer than that of Rethymno's.
Agios Nikolaos
Agios Nikolaos sits to the East of Heraklion - so this could be a good option if you are using Heraklion airport to get to/from Crete. We never made it to Agios Nikolaos but it is one place in Crete that has been constantly recommended by both the people we met in Crete and also friends and family back in the UK. It is, by all accounts, a lively place with a very nice harbor area with some very big and expensive yachts plus plenty of bars and taverna's to keep you occupied - more info here...
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/greece/crete/agios-nikolaos
Rethymno Options...If you don't wish to move around then keep Rethymno Old Town as your base and hire a car for a few days. See the 'Explore' TAB for day trip options.
7+ Days
There are lots of options - we spent 8 days on Crete traveling around and covered less than half the island. So to extend your holiday further you could add on one of the following options to the above 4-6 Day...
- Ferry Hop along the Southern coast of Crete. There are several really nice villages along the southern coast, some of which can only be reached by boat. There are several ferries a day making it very easy to spend the night in one village before ferry hopping on to the next. The best villages to visit are... Paleochora, Sougia, Agia Roumeli, Loutro and Hora Sfakia. The village that gets the best comments being Loutro although we never made it to this one.
- Falassarna - this is a small village with nice tavernas (Spilios & Vasillas) on the western side of Crete and it also has a great beach. You could fly into Chania and then rent a car for a few days, using it to get to Falassarna and explore the western side of Crete. From Falassarna you can get to three great beaches... Elefonissi Beach, Balos Beach and Falassarna's own. We stayed at Kavoussi Hotel which was basic but very good. Be warned though if you're after something lively this is not the place to come - it was very quiet.
- Greek Island Hopping - see Google for more details (:
