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Hotels in Crete – Head for Heraklion

Crete, like the rest of Greece, has wonderful beaches and a stunning coastline. Hotels in Crete mostly cater for beach holidays, and the interior is less attractive,dry and dusty. If you’re a fan of big cacti you’ll be blown away by the monstrous spiky things that grow willy nilly all over the place. Fantastic things – Bougainvillea is beautiful but these boys take the gardener’s biscuit! Hotels in Crete? There’s absolutely loads. Try the Kastro hotel in Heraklion, a few miles from the airport. Very convenient for the town centre and shopping and a great base from which to explore the entire island. You can’t miss it – just head for the archaeological museum, it is right next door.

Crete Hotels – From low cost to luxury

Hotels in Crete, like anywhere else, vary tremendously. It depends what you’re after. You’ll find loads of really low cost, simple rooms and apartments, plenty of mid-priced family hotels and apartment complexes, and the usual massive hotel blocks with thousands of rooms. The Doge Traditional Hotel is a Venetian house built in the 1300s, with eight comfortable rooms for 2-5 people. Lovely, relatively pricey and only 500m from the beach.

Hotels in Crete – Historical treasures and gods galore

The gorgeous Blue Palace resort and Spa sits on a cliff, the height of luxury with private pools, and delightful surroundings. As hotels in Crete go, this one’s a beauty. Like all Greek tourist spots, behind the scenes Crete has a fascinating history and it is stuffed with the remnants of ancient Greece’s lively, intellectual, pantheistic culture. You can almost imagine Neptune (or is he the Roman god of the sea?) rising out of the ocean with his hair full of banana-boaters, topless sunbathers and windsurfing kit. The Blue Palace is one of the best hotels in Crete – book your own personal bungalow, suite or villa and dive into your holiday…

Sound like heaven? Book your Crete hotel here and now!

Or take a tour round our hotel pages for Hotels in Athens, Hotels in Faliraki, Hotels in Greece, Hotels in Kos, Hotels in Rhodes, and Hotels in Zante

Here are just some of the hotels and resorts we sell in Crete

Cheap Holidays to Crete Holidays - Something for Everyone

This is the largest of the Greek islands and offers a smashing variety of everything that’s great about Greece holidays. There are loads of little towns or villages to discover that aren’t quite on the map as far as international tourism goes. You can really feel a long way away when you’re in Crete. It has surprisingly remarkable scenery that’s more reminiscent of something you might expect to find in Hawaii or New Zealand. There’s The Gorge of Samaria - just one of over 50 gorges in the White Mountains of Crete. Fancy a spot of hiking? Go on, do it! What’s the worst thing that could happen? (Apart from a massive rock falling on your head, should you choose to explore a gorge just after heavy rain of course).

Crete Holidays - Archaeological Discoveries!

If you can’t manage a gorge, there are archaeological sites galore to explore, and that Venetian influence that’s understandably crept toward Greece to uncover too. Venice ruled Crete once you know, it goes back to 1204 when Crete was part of the Roman Empire and given to Venice to thank Venice for help during a crusade. The Fourth Crusade to be more accurate, which was against Constantinople, which is now Istanbul, in Turkey. We’re not going to test you on this later, don’t worry. History aside, Crete has a marvellous selection of beaches. It’s a big island and there are more than enough to go round. Most are sandy, some are stony, but the water is always very clear and lovely.

Holidays Crete - The Four Main Areas

Divided into four ‘prefectures’ (we’ll call them ‘bits’) you’ll hear them mentioned when you’re there so here are the names of the bits now, going west to east: Chania, Rethymno, Heraklion, and Lasithi. Chania is rumoured to have the best beaches, but it’s an academic argument as they are all lovely in their own special ways. Cheap Crete holidays are available all year round at BeattheBrochure.com

Flights to Crete – help the locals celebrate

Flights to Crete are most likely to drop you off at Heraklion airport, confusingly also called Kazantzakis airport. There are airports at Chania (AKA Daskalogiannis Airport - why?!) and there’s also a little airport called Sitia. Thankfully Sitia doesn’t have an alias… enough is enough. Sitia airport is planning to take on charter flights soon, so flights to Crete will soon come in three flavours. Crete is a real treat, a delightful place with lovely locals. Like the rest of Greece, the Cretan year is one long festival with all sorts of exciting stuff going on whenever you visit. Choose flights to Crete if you’re into helping people celebrate… every town has its own patron saint’s day and they really push the boat out. The best? Book flights to Crete that’ll let you join in with the Sitia Kornania festival, Rethymno's Renaissance Festival, Kyrvia Festival in Ierapetra or Iraklio's festival of summer arts

Crete Flights – Fly into Heraklion Airport

Most charter flights to Crete land at Heraklion, an ordinary and fairly ugly sort of town but very convenient for exploring the rest of this fabulous island. The airport itself is only three miles from the city and there are plenty of good car hire firms there touting for business. If, for you, flights to Crete equal freedom of choice, fly to Heraklion and from there the Cretan world’s your oyster. You don’t have to go far to discover quiet fishing villages and ports stuffed with authentic Greek culture.

Flights to Crete – Rivers, lakes and forests

You don’t imagine Crete being a place of rivers. In the summer it is exceptionally hot and the countryside inland is parched, dry and brown throughout the peak season. But there are rivers, even though they’re mostly very short and dry up completely in summer. One exception is the River Preveli to the south, in the Rethymnon district, another’s the Vrisses River in Chania. There are even a handful of stunning lakes – head off for Kournas lake, surrounded by bars and pretty tavernas. A lovely place to while away an evening. Many people use flights to Crete as a dropping off point for the local islands, a sprinkling of stunning little jewels in the turquoise sea including Gavdos, Hrissi, Koufonisia and Gramvoussa. Pronounce that lot properly and we’ll send you a Blue Peter Badge.

Book your flights to Crete here.

Or take a tour round our flights pages for Flights to Athens, Flights to Faliraki, Flights to Greece, Flights to Kos, Flights to Rhodes and Flights to Zante

Attrcations Crete - Palace of Knossos

No one is sure exactly who lived here, but near the capital, Iraklio, the Palace of Knossos is a part-reconstructed palatial example of what would have been home to someone rather important the better part of 4000 years ago. A sort-of Minoan Beckingham Palace then.

Crete Attractions - Samaria Gorge

There’s 11 miles of this gorge, so it’s not to be tackled lightly. Samaria Gorge to Agia Roumeli is the full route. At one part the gorge is only 11.5 feet wide, so somewhat imposing and impressive. Loads of wildlife, but nothing that’s particularly inclined to eat you, which is nice. The gorge is open from 6am to 3pm, from May to mid-October, depending on the amount of water in the gorge. Be careful out there.

Attractions in Crete - Iraklio

Crete's largest city Iraklio, or Heraklion as it’s also known, is near to the airport you’re more than likely to land at (there are a few other airports on Crete you might arrive at should you be on an internal flight from Greece). It has a grand archaeological museum with Minoan Bull heads and other stuff of legends. It’s only about six miles from the Palace of Knossos, and worth a visit for the archaeological museum alone.

Well these Greek island airports are just that – airports on relatively small Greek islands. Don’t expect JFK and you’ll be just fine.

The flight time from the UK is just over four hours, and you’ll go direct to Heraklion airport, which is fine. Like any busy airport with lots of charter flights there can be delays and facilities can become somewhat over-subscribed, but that can happen at Heathrow for heaven’s sake! So let’s have no moaning about the airport and crack on with making the most of this fascinating island.

Find Great Holidays in Crete with www.BeatTheBrochure.com!

What are you missing right now in Crete ? Here’s a 4 day weather forecast for Crete

12 Month Weather Forecast

Low Temp

High Temp

January

8°C

16°C

February

8°C

16°C

March

10°C

17°C

April

12°C

20°C

May

15°C

24°C

June

18°C

28°C

July

22°C

29°C

August

21°C

29°C

September

19°C

27°C

October

16°C

24°C

November

13°C

21°C

December

10°C

17°C

Visiting Crete soon and want to know how to get out and about?

Street maps of Crete are provided here by our partner Google. You can use the interactive maps to view a map of tourist attractions in Crete, city and road information and for general directions. We believe Google provide the best tourist maps of Crete so have integrated them into our comprehensive travel guide

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