Crete is mine, Crete is yours…

The wonderful nature of the island allows us to offer our guests diverse avant-garde programmes for each day of their rest. The island still retained its individuality and original appearance, and we, the Cretans, are very glad to introduce you our beloved and unique land.

Our island is mountainous. Four major mountain ranges have added grate beauty to the landscape: Lefka Ori, Psiloritis (Ida range), Dikti and the range of Lassithi. There are also many high plateaus in Crete. The most famous is called Lassithi. Since difficult historical times, peoples moved, and to this day are being preserved traditions, music and dance in small villages on the plateau. As for delicious national dishes, there is there a real paradise for gourmets. Even in the height of summer, you can relax under the vines with a chilled raki and Cretan salad, also listening to the sounds of lyre, going back to the old days. In the neighborhood lies the Nida plateau where the best cheese is being made according to old recipes, in stone houses older then 500 years.

Crete has many caves. Since Minoan times, these beautiful wonders of nature were places of worshipping the Deity of the Mother Earth. Even the deity Zeus was born in such a cave on the plateau of Lassithi, and he grew up in another one, next to the Nida plateau. A few miles from this place is amazing beautiful cave Sfendoni, as well as the longest cave Melidoni. On the mount Juktas, located in the four cardinal points and shrouded in mysticism, 4 caves are hidden from human eyes next to the oldest inhabited to this day the Archanes village. On the same mount is also the largest open-air Minoan temple. Modern Greeks built on its place the church of Christ the Savior.

One of the characteristic features of the island are gorges which descend from the mountains to the sea, deep into the bowels of the earth. Samaria, the longest gorge of Europe, will test your physical abilities but also give you an incredible feeling. If you are lucky, you might enjoy a Cretan wild goat called kri-kri. The Imbros gorge will show quite different nature, transporting you into another world.  The gorges of flapping sails called Kourtaliotiko will fascinate you with its spring sources and provide an opportunity to take a walk in the wild palm forest near the shore of beautiful beach of Preveli, and in the Tripti gorge of the Asterousia Mountains you will see a nature resembling that of Africa.

In Crete we show you cypress forests in the Rethymno area, as well as wild forests full of Cretan dwarf oak, and Europe’s largest natural palm forest of Vai will captivate you because of its exotic originality so distinctive from other attractions of the island. Every day you can swim in another sea. The Ionian Sea, Cretan Sea, Libyan Sea and Myrtoan Sea, all of them are parts of the Mediterranean Sea, but significantly different from each other.

February, 2018