Europe · Greece

Crete

Sea plus walking: the Samaria Gorge, Knossos and ten days near Chania. Direct flight from Vienna.

Crete works for two kinds of traveller at once, which is why we keep it. If you want to lie by the sea, you have seven days for it. If you want to walk, there are three excursions that are not strolls. We stay in Platanias, twelve kilometres from Chania, in a small hotel with thirteen rooms and breakfast on a terrace above the bay.

The Samaria Gorge is the longest canyon in Europe: sixteen kilometres of descent from the Omalos plateau down to the sea at Agia Roumeli. It takes six to seven hours, almost all downhill, which sounds easy until your knees start burning at kilometre three. It opens in early May and closes at the end of October depending on water levels. You come back by boat and bus. Anyone who does not fancy it stays at the beach that day and nobody argues.

Knossos is a different matter. The palace is largely a 1920s reconstruction, which disappoints some people — until the guide explains how the drainage system worked three thousand years ago. Balos lagoon can be reached by boat from Kissamos or by a dirt track no rental company wants you to drive. We take the boat. The programme also includes an olive press near Kolymvari, where you taste oil from three varieties and can hear the difference explained by someone who makes it. Crete has its own cooking, only loosely related to the mainland: dakos, snails and myzithra cheese are not eaten elsewhere.

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