Crete (Heraklion)

This Month in Crete (Heraklion):

Shopping: Talos Plaza is a small shopping centre featuring a handful of budget foreign high-street stores, located by the sea front on the edge of the town centre (Sofokli Venizelou and Minoos Street).

Sightseeing: Head to the countryside on 1 May, a national holiday to celebrate May Day and the Feast of the Flowers. Families traditionally picnic and gather wild flowers to make spring wreaths, which are hung on cars and homes. During the rest of the month, the spring flowers can be appreciated in many of the meadows around the countryside.

Crete (Heraklion) News & Gossip

Greek Odyssey

#1 WIND IN YOUR HAIR
ZANTE

Forty kilometres from sandy tip to rocky toe, this bijou island, dubbed "Flower of the Levant" by the Venetians, is a breeze for adventurers who want to pack in traditional villages, flavoursome dishes and stunning sights from the saddle of a quad bike. Hire your steed in the airport (1) and buzz via pine-forested slopes to Keri. Hike around the steep streets of this stunning stone-built mountain village, then wiggle down the beach road and hop aboard a brightly coloured caïque (boat) for Marathonisi, keeping an eye out for the table-sized backs of rare Caretta caretta turtles en route. Back from that paradisiacal islet, you'll zoom west to Macherado and get soul food in the high-flung hamlet's icon-studded 14th-century church, before feeding your stomach on lamb stew giouvetsi and other local delights at family-run taverna Lithino (2). Zipping along the Vrachiona Mountains' panoramic spine, you'll take a cream-packed bugatsa pastry pudding-break at the bakery in Katastari, then glide down to Porto Zante Villas (3) for a pre-sunset tumble in the spa of this luxurious hotel. We fly to Zante from London Gatwick

#2 CREEK SPRINGS
KILLINI

Seeking to soothe those quad bruises, you'll take a 45-minute ferry ride to Killini, pick up your hire car (www.cars.easyJet.com) and follow signs to Loutra Killini (4). Stripping to swimwear, you'll smother yourself in gooey volcanic mud - said to cure everything from asthma to cellulite - and bake for an hour. Emerging from your muddy cocoon like a sulfur-scented butterfly, you'll follow the pine-studded coast road to Samiko (5), to freshen up in the mineral-rich cave pool where Greek geographer Pausanias frolicked back in the second century AD. Reinvigorated by your spring cleaning, you'll take the Tripoli road inland, pausing to bungy jump (6) above tooting tankers in the Corinth Canal. Tumbling to Loutraki (7), you'll calm your nerves with a soak in the sodium chloride springs where, legend has it, Roman General Sulla was cured of alopecia. After sweet sleep at the historic sea-view Karellion Hotel (8), complete the healing process with a dip in the waters of hot spring-fed Vouliagmeni (9).

#3 PHOTO TOUR
ATHENS

Rising amongst wacky designs at art-collector-owned sleeperie Semiramis (10), you'll head out on a photography tour (11) to discover the hip underbelly of Socrates' city and (hopefully) improve your shutter skills. Rapidly adjusting your ISO, you'll shoot a few rolls of the recently opened glass-and-concrete Acropolis Museum (12), before toting your kit east a few blocks to get snap happy in Kolonaki's picture-perfect lane-labyrinth cluttered with smart eateries and chic boutiques. Zooming in on designer boutiques such as Balenciaga and Bettina, you're bound to overexpose your wallet, before zooming out of the posh zone and heading for boho Gazi, to focus on the vast 12-hectare gasworks-turned-cultural-centre Technopolis (13). As sunset glints over the centre's neon-red smokestacks, you'll drag your Nikon to Nixon (14) to sup on mezze snacks and make out like a paparazzo in this hip pub-cinema in a converted warehouse, where the city's in-crowd love to cluster. Next morning a high-speed ferry will whisk you to Mykonos. We fly to Athens from Berlin, London Gatwick, Manchester, Milan Malpensa, Paris Orly and Rome Fiumicino

#4 CULTURE VULTURE
MYKONOS

Follow daytrippers dashing to sun-scorched Delos - one of Europe's most significant architectural sites, and supposedly the birthplace of the Greek god Apollo. Back on Mykonos, hire a retro-style Benelli Pepe scooter (15) and skedaddle inland to Ano Mera to discover the jet-set isle's less-touted charms. Far from madding crowds you'll meander around sixth-century Moni Panagias Tourlianis' (16) museum chock-a-block with antique icons, then feast on traditional fish stew kakavia in the ancient village square (17). Freewheeling to Ftelia, you'll resist the siren lure of the sandy beach to seek out Iliad hero Ajax Locrian, who's buried somewhere on the resort's vast 5,000BC archaeological site (18). The scenic route that snakes from here, via Marathi's vast artificial lake, will take you to Cape Armenistis' 19th-century lighthouse, where you'll clamber up 100-something steps for gob-smacking views. Taking the coast road back to Mykonos town, you'll step out on a two-hour walking tour (19) to discover Little Venice's back streets (with a stop at sunset for a cocktail or two), then snuggle up for time-warped slumbers at 60s-style Theoxenia Hotel (20), and dream of your ferry trip to Crete tomorrow. We fly to Mykonos from London Gatwick, Milan Malpensa, Paris Orly and Rome Fiumicino

#5 WAXING LYRA-CAL
CRETE

Collecting your jeep that you cannily booked in advance (21), you'll head out to discover the haunts of the folk music that's seduced the likes of Dylan and Baez. Tuned into Cretan radio (22) you'll sashay along the beach-studded coast to Ierapetra, where big names, such as mad-bad genius Giorgos Zervakis (23) and velvet-voiced artiste Nikos Zoidakis (24) play regularly in a plethora of small clubs. Following the wild-goat-cluttered cross-mountain road to Armeni (25), you'll order Mythos beer served with free mezze snacks at the kafeneion and hope to witness a jam session by village-born lyra virtuoso Giannis Katsavavakis (26). Gliding onto Sitia, you'll bowl to the seafront to admire the statue of local-born Vitsentzos Kornaros, author of the 16th-century Erotokritos love poem that inspires many of the lyrics of Cretan folk music. After sticking around to catch some of those three-stringed lyra sounds during the city's Kornaria Festival (27), you'll be inspired to scoot back towards Heraklion to join a music workshop with Irish-born lyra maestro Ross Daly (28), thus ending your Greek Odyssey on a lyra-cal note. We fly to Crete Heraklion from Berlin, Bristol, London Gatwick, Manchester, Milan Malpensa and Rome Fiumicino. Plus there's a flight from London Gatwick to Crete's other airport, Chania

KEY

1 Motorclub Zante, www.motorclubzante.gr
2 Lithino, Macherado, tel: +30 26950 93094
3 Spa bookings at Porto Zante Villas, Tragakii, www.portozante.com
4 Loutra Killini, Killini, www.infokillini.gr
5 Lake Caiaphas, Samiko.
6 Bungy jump Corinth Canal, www.zulubungy.com
7 Loutraki Springs, Loutraki, www.loutraki.gr
8 Book at www.hotels.easyJet.com
9 Vouliagmeni Lake, Vouliagmeni.
10 Book the Semiramis and thousands more at www.hotels.easyJet.com
11 Athens Photography Tour, Viator, www.viator.com/athens
12 Acropolis Museum, Makriyianni, www.theacropolismuseum.gr
13 Technopolis, Piraeus 100, www.cityofathens.gr/en/node/7520
14 Nixon, 61B Agisilaou, Kerameikos, www.nixon.gr
15 Rent scooters from www.mykonosrentacar.com or four wheels at www.cars.easyJet.com
16 Moni Panagias Tourliani, Ano Mera.
17 Apostolis, Ano Mera.
18 Ftelia archaeological site, Ftelia, tel: +30 228 90 22325
19 Walking tour Mykonos, www.thesaurus.gr/tour_jmk_walking.html
20 For the best rates, book the Hotel Theoxenia, Mykonos at www.hotels.easyJet.com
21 You can hire all sorts of vehicles, including jeeps, from www.cars.easyJet.com
22 Cretan music radio, Top FM 89.8.
23 Giorgos Zervakis, www.zervakis.gr/index1.htm
24 Nikos Zoidakis, www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14997373027
25 Kafeneion Central Square, Armeni, turn off from Lithines.
26 Giannis Katsavavakis, www.katsavavakis.gr
27 Kornaria, Sitia, www.sitia.gr/visitor/manifestation/programme1.html
28 Ross Daly, Labyrinthos, Houdetsi, www.rossdaly.gr

Crete (Heraklion) Trivia

• May: Wreaths of May Day flowers, hung outside homes on 1 May, are traditionally left in place until the festival of St John the Baptist on 24 June, when they are burnt on bonfires.

• April: The Palace at Knossos was once the seat of King Minos; the palace was designed with such complexity that the maze of corridors and rooms gave birth to the Greek myths of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur.

• March: Greece became an independent nation in 1830 following the War of Independence, but Crete continued to battle the Ottoman-Turk occupation and wasn't united with Greece until 1913. When the Greek flag was raised for the first time on the island, over the Firkas Fortress in Chania.

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