Knossos Palace
Before starting our trip towards Crete’s West Coast, we decided to make a stop at Knossos Palace, 15min/5km drive south of Heraklion as this is one of the most famous – if not the most famous – tourist attraction in Crete. **TIPS**If you are planning to visit the “Palace” – which by the way is in ruins only – I highly recommend you to book your ticket online ahead of your visit in order to skip the queue. Due to covid-19, we did not have a long wait but I understood you normally have to wait for close to an hour without tickets! The tickets is about 15 euros/person but does not include any forms of guides, you can still hire someone on-site if you want to. Knossos Palace was destroyed a number of times due to Earthquakes or other fires. While the site is big and impressive esp. with some nicely preserved rooms and fine frescoes, we were expecting a little bit more in terms of reconstitution to help put things in context. Keep in mind that Knossos Palace is just ruins! Depending on the degree of details you want to get into, you could spend between 45min and 1h30 in the site. If you are a fan of archaeology, this is generally recommended to pair the visit with the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.
Rethymno
After about 1h20 drive, we decided to have a lunch break at Rethymno, Crete’s third largest city. Rethymno is a city also largely influenced by the Venetians & Ottomans’ eras. The Venetians actually built a harbour in the 16th century and started to fortify the town to protect themselves against the Turks. However, the Turks eventually took over the city in the middle of the 16th century and stayed there until the end of the 18th century.
There are thousands of bars/restaurants along the waterfront. You would find the most “traditional” ones e.g. fish restaurants in the Venetian Harbour. We opted for a larger and more modern café called “Queens Room” not too far away from the sandy beaches. It was a little hard to pick one specifically as they all looked very empty and the same style. We were eventually very happy with our choice, the food was really good and the portions very (too?) generous. After lunch, we did a quick tour into the very charming maze of streets in the Old Town. It was Sunday so many little shops were closed but this is definitely a nice area I would recommend spending time in. Without visiting it, we walked along the big Fortezza as well as the Sultan Bin Ibrahim Mosque and we ended up back to the Venetian Harbour and its imposing lighthouse (built in the 19th century by the Egyptians). We did not get to stay longer in Rethymno but it was definitely a charming little town that could deserve a full day or two.
Kissamos
After another 1h of drive, we eventually arrived in Kissamos. Talking about driving, the Cretan have an interesting way to drive. They tend to drive on the across the right line of their lane so that other cars can pass them if they want to at any time (even if this is not allowed to drive at that point!) We picked to stay in Kissamos for a number of nights (4 in total) as we found it ideally located for day-tripping to various locations. While you can find a number of hotels/restaurants in the waterfront, separated into two parts, Kissamos is not a touristy town as such. We stayed at a hotel called Aphrodite Beach located in the sandy Mavros Molos in the west part of the waterfront promenade. Our initial allocated room was very large and with lateral view on the sea but it looked quite old and very different from the pictures the hotel is showing on Booking.com. Even before having seen the room, they offered us an upgrade (negotiated a bit later to 20 pounds/night. There was no comparison… The other room was brand-new, very modern and located on its own on the top floor of the building with a large window with full view on the sea and a very large rooftop terrace. We ended up having a great stay there. The hotel has great equipment: good-size swimming pool, private beach and beach bar. For our first evening at Kissamos, we went to a local Cretan restaurant located next to the hotel called Stelios&Katina. They have a nice vegetal garden in the back with many cats/kittens. The staff was very welcoming and the food was good. We understood during this dinner that the Cretans are very welcoming and generous offering you a bunch of freebies; in this restaurant we got garlic bread, free dessert + a little bottle of Raki (for shots!).
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