Crete travel tips

Crete is 260 km long. That single fact decides most of your holiday: what is worth doing depends far more on where you are staying than on any top-ten list. A day trip that is relaxed from Hersonissos is a five-hour round trip from Chania.

Hersonissos is the busiest resort in central Crete and, for a first trip, one of the most practical bases: 25 minutes from Heraklion airport, on the national road, with everything from waterparks to quiet mountain villages inside an hour.

Heraklion is Crete's capital and the island's main gateway. Most visitors pass through it on the way from the airport and never come back, which is a mistake - the Minoan collection here is one of the most important in Europe, and the old town is small enough to walk in an afternoon.

Rethymno sits halfway between Heraklion and Chania and keeps the best-preserved Venetian old town on the island - Ottoman minarets, wooden balconies and lanes narrow enough to lose your sense of direction in.

Chania has the most photographed harbour in Greece and the wildest landscape behind it. The old town is Venetian, Ottoman and Cretan layered on top of each other; the White Mountains start twenty minutes inland and do not stop until the Libyan Sea.

Agios Nikolaos is built around a small round lake that opens into the sea, and that lake is the whole character of the town: cafés on three sides, fishing boats on the fourth, and the Mirabello gulf beyond.

Elounda is the quiet, expensive end of eastern Crete - a sheltered bay, a village square that still functions as one, and the island of Spinalonga sitting a few hundred metres offshore.

Crete has a long season: the island is warm from April to early November, and the sea stays swimmable far later than most people expect. The question is not whether it will be warm, but what you want to do while you are here.

You can absolutely have a good week in Crete without driving - as long as you choose your base with that in mind. The north coast is well served by buses; everything else is not.