Crete is bigger than you think.
Whether Balos is reachable from where you are staying, whether the Samaria walk is really sixteen kilometres, and which coast to sleep on. Every tour on Crete, reviewed.
Crete has two capitals. Sleep in one of them.
All 9 bases →Heraklion is the capital now; Chania was until 1971, and the two sit 140 kilometres apart on the north coast road. Where you sleep decides which of the famous days is an hour away and which is five.
Chania: harbour, gorge, lagoon
The Venetian harbour takes an evening. Behind it sit the Samaria trailhead at Omalos, the Kissamos quay for Balos, Elafonisi two hours down the west coast, and Loutro, which has no road in at all.
See all 232 →
Heraklion: the palace and the plateau
Knossos is five kilometres out of town and the frescoes are in the museum in the middle of it. From the same base: the sailing boats to Dia, the mountain road up to Lasithi, and Matala on the far south coast.
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Agios Nikolaos: Mirabello and the fort
The gulf of Mirabello, the short crossings to Spinalonga from Elounda and Plaka, and the road east that empties out the moment the Hersonissos strip is behind you.
See all 41 →Balos, Samaria, Knossos: the days people fly in for.
A lagoon you reach by boat, a gorge you walk downhill to the sea, a palace older than the Parthenon, and a pink beach at the far south-west corner. Book these first and fit the rest of the week around them.
The days that fill up first on Crete.
Every review →Boats to the lagoon, the walk down the gorge, the ticket to the palace: the days more travellers book than anything else on the island.
1
From Kissamos Port: Boat Cruise to Balos Lagoon & Gramvousa
Boat day trip from Kissamos to Balos Lagoon and Gramvousa Island, swim, hike to the Venetian castle, and enjoy sea cave views.
From · $47
Read our review →
2
Day Trip to Agios Nikolaos and Spinalonga Island
from $44
3
Full-Day Samaria Gorge Trek Excursion & Guide
from $41
4
Boat Trip to Spinalonga with Swim Stop
from $29
5
Dia Island Sailboat Cruise with Swimming and Meal
from $95
6
Knossos Palace Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guide
from $30
7
Heraklion Area: CRETAquarium Admission Ticket
from $9
8
Day Trip to Elafonisi Island Pink Sand Beach
from $38
Chania: the harbour is the least of it.
The old town is an evening. The rest of the west is a week — Omalos for the gorge, Kissamos for the lagoon boats, Elafonisi at the bottom of the coast road, and Loutro, which you can only reach on foot or by ferry.
Knossos first, then what Heraklion keeps behind it.
The oldest palace in Europe sits five kilometres south of the city and its frescoes hang in the museum in the centre. Beyond both: the sailing boats out to Dia, the switchbacks up to the Lasithi windmills, and the olive country around Archanes.
The bookings Crete makes you plan around.
Most of the island can be arranged at the hotel desk the night before. These four cannot: they run on a national-park season, a ferry timetable, a fast-boat manifest and a ticket queue that forms before the gate opens.
- 01Full-Day Samaria Gorge Trek Excursion & GuideThe gorge is a national park with a season: open spring to late autumn only, and closed outright on any day the weather turns. The walking days are finite and they are the busy ones.
- 02From Kissamos Port: Boat Cruise to Balos Lagoon & GramvousaThe Kissamos boat runs to its own timetable, not to yours, and a hard north wind cancels the crossing altogether. Seats go long before the morning does.
- 03Full-Day Trip to Santorini by BoatThe fast boat leaves early, returns late and crosses open water. In high summer the sailing is sold out days ahead of the date you want.
- 04Knossos Palace Entry Ticket with Optional Audio GuideThe site opens early for a reason. By mid-morning the ticket queue and the coach groups arrive together, and a timed entry is the whole difference between the two mornings.
What a day out on Crete actually costs.
Every tour on the site by price. The cheap end is not the weak end here: a bus to a beach and a ticket to a palace are two of the best days on the island.
Beach buses, palace entry, the Kissamos boat, an evening of Cretan food. Most of the classics live down here.
Full-day coach trips with pickup, the gorge walks, sailing afternoons with lunch, quad and jeep safaris.
Private drivers, chartered catamarans, and small-group days with a guide who stays with you for all of it.
Three things Crete has that the rest of Greece does not.
Every island in the Aegean has beaches and boat trips. The gorge, the palace and the fortress island belong to this one.
The Samaria Gorge
It starts on the Omalos plateau above twelve hundred metres and finishes at the Libyan Sea sixteen kilometres later, and there is no road out at the bottom. You leave Agia Roumeli by boat to Sfakia and by coach from there, which is why almost everyone walks it as an organised day. At the Iron Gates the walls close to a few metres apart with hundreds of metres of rock above them. It is a walk rather than a climb, but it is a long one, and the park is open spring to autumn only.
- 1Full-Day Samaria Gorge Trek Excursion & Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,191 reviews
- 2Samaria Gorge Full-Day Trek, Pickup & Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,610 reviews
- 3Samariá Gorge Guided Hike with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,010 reviews
The Palace of Knossos
Built and rebuilt from around 1900 BC, abandoned, buried, and dug out again by Arthur Evans after 1900 AD. Evans also rebuilt parts of it in concrete and repainted the columns the deep red everybody photographs, and the argument about how much of what you see he invented has been running for a century. It is the oldest city in Europe either way, and the frescoes themselves are five kilometres away in the museum in Heraklion.
- 1Knossos Palace Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 3.9 · 2,251 reviews
- 2Palace of Knossos E-Ticket and Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 3.8 · 1,540 reviews
- 3Knossos Palace Skip-the-Line Guided Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,380 reviews
Spinalonga
A Venetian sea fort on a small island in the gulf of Mirabello, later a leper colony, and the last one in Europe until it closed in 1957. Boats cross from Elounda, Plaka and Agios Nikolaos; the crossing is short and a walk round the island takes about an hour. What is left is the tunnel gate, the street, the houses and the cemetery. It is treated as what it is, and the guides here are worth having.
- 1Day Trip to Agios Nikolaos and Spinalonga Island★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 4,416 reviews
- 2Boat Trip to Spinalonga with Swim Stop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 3,031 reviews
- 3Spinalonga & Kolokytha Cruise with Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 735 reviews
The road stops. Crete keeps going.
Behind the coast the island climbs past two thousand metres and the surface turns to dirt. Quads on the Agia Pelagia backroads, Land Rovers over the Psiloritis tracks, buggies through the riverbeds south of Rethymno.
The Cretan table takes a whole afternoon.
Oil pressed within sight of the trees it came off, cheese from the same valley, raki poured whether you asked for it or not. The olive-farm mornings and the cooking afternoons are the best-value day on the island by a distance.
The wind cancels the boats. It does not cancel Crete.
The meltemi is the summer north wind, and on Crete it decides whether the Balos ferry and the Spinalonga crossings run at all. When the harbour flags are standing straight out, turn inland: the gorges are sheltered, the palace does not care, and the olive farms are glad of the shade.
By base — where you are sleeping
Chania232 tours
Heraklion209 tours
Rethymno60 tours
Agios Nikolaos & Elounda41 tours
Hersonissos & Malia39 tours
Kissamos19 tours
Plakias10 tours
Sfakia10 tours
Matala9 tours- Every review on the island →
By day — what kind of day is it?
One week on Crete, west to east.
SamariaLatest Crete tour reviews.
All recent →
5-Wine Tasting with Locals in Village near Kissamos
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Mirabello Luxuries with Spinalonga & Agios Nikolaos from Iraklion
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Ecobike All inclusive – 2 Day tour – Discover the real Crete
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Truffle Hunting, Culinary & Wine Celebration from Heraklion
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Private Guided Tour to Knossos Palace, the Museum and Heraklion
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Cretan Flavors – Cooking Lessons and Wine Olive Oil Tasting
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Secrets of West Crete & Rethymno Town Private Tour from Heraklion
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Uncharted East Crete & Local Secrets Private Tour from Heraklion
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