Crete – Greece

An overview with ranking and GoogleMaps links to the 5 most beautiful beaches on Crete. We'll tell you where to find the paradisiacal bays & Caribbean beaches that you see all the time on Instagram & Co.

With the origins of democracy and numerous well-known philosophers, hardly any other country has shaped our western nation as much as Greece. The region of Crete is always worth a visit.

With more than 200 inhabited islands in Greece to explore, each with their own attractions, brilliant sunsets and aquamarine waters, it can be a tall order to decide which one is best suited for your vacation. That's why U.S. News took into account sights, seasonality and traveler sentiment to come up with this list of the best Greek islands.

No matter how many times you visit Crete, its beauty and charm will keep surprising you. The more time you spend on the island, the more you fall in love with it… To the point where to make your first visit even more memorable, you wish you could tell your younger self a few travel tips about Crete. These insight tips will help you make the most of your visit to the island. Keep reading to learn 20 of the best-kept Crete travel tips you cannot easily find out there.

There is super clear water and a wonderful marine world all around Crete, but which are actually the very best bays for snorkeling? We slowly ran our fingers over the island map and picked out the 10 best snorkeling spots in Crete.

Crete offers a very large variety of different habitats from agricultural mountain villages to urban and modern cities and back again to picturesque fishing villages right by the sea. We have a small selection of the most interesting places and cities on the Greek island for you.

Our Villa Zoé is situated on the outskirts of Koutouloufari, a small Greek village, 2 km from the sea in a beautiful hillside location, with tranquil tourism, small shops & taverns. We are not located in an isolated olive grove, but rather only a few minutes on foot from the village centre on an access road leading to the sea. It only takes a few minutes to get to the national road connecting the western and the eastern sides of the island. It is a 20-minute drive to Heraklion, in the east, half an hour to Agios Nikolaos or to the Libyan Sea in the south, and all the way across the island to Ierapetra in under an hour.

With incredible countryside and rich history, there are so many things to do in Crete. So we’ve prepared a love-list for your next magical holiday in Greece.

The combination of mountains & sea and more sunshine than anywhere else in Greece, makes just about everything taste delicious. But perhaps the most important ingredient is the love (meraki, as it’s known) and imagination that goes into so many Cretan dishes. After all, alongside all the other traditions of Crete, food is a way of life on Greece’s largest island.

Pictures say more than 1000 words! Video clips give you a direct impression of the country and its people. Whether it's 4 or 40 minutes long, you get a wide selection on YouTube ...

The Palace of Knossos is located just south of modern-day Heraklion near the north coast of Crete. Built by a civilization that we call the Minoans, it covers about 150,000 square feet (14,000 square meters), the size of more than two football fields, and was surrounded by a town in antiquity...

Visit Knossos in Crete and see where the myth of the Minotaur and Labyrinth was born. Here's some travel tips for how to make the most of your time when visiting Knossos...

The Palace of Knossos, located about five kilometers (three miles) south of Heraklion on Kephala hill, was the largest of all the Minoan palaces in Crete. It was also at the core of the highly sophisticated civilization that flourished on the island over 3,500 years ago...

Crete is a great island to visit at any time of year. The southernmost Greek isle has beaches, ancient archaeological sites, throwback villages, and myriad nature hikes—not to mention the pleasant winter temperatures. Find out what to do, where to stay, and more in this ultimate guide.

It was hard to find any resources for diving in Crete. I went back and forth between choosing dive shops around Chania and others in the south of the island. The draw of the north were the famous elephant caves which is a stunning cavern underwater with remnants of an elephant. The pictures certainly looked cool.

Crete is known for its gorgeous beaches and let me tell you, if it is nice beaches you’re after, you will not be disappointed. The island is a goldmine of picturesque and stunning blue beaches. I can’t even begin to act like I know where they all are but here are some of the most stunning ones I discovered.

According to the Greek legend, King Minos, known to be just and wise, ruled Crete. The sea god Poseidon sent him a bull as a sign of his royal dignity, but he did not sacrifice it as promised. Through the divine vengeance, Minos' wife Pasiphae fell in love with the bull. From this connection she gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with a human shape and a bull's head. Minos locked the dangerous Minotaur in the labyrinth built by Daedalus...