| Page Views: 38 Last Visit to Crete Island: June, 2008 | Crete by Aitana - last update: Sep 11, 2009 |
Crete is such a big island that it is impossible to resume it in a VT page; nevertheless, I'll try to tell here some of impressions the island made on me, and build other VT pages for some of the places I visited.
There are two features that define Crete: the high mountains and the presence of olive trees.
There are several mountain ranges and two peacks of 2450 m in an island whowe maximun distances are 250 km long and 60 km wide. Wherever you are, you feel surrounded by mountains and the simple fact of crossing the island from the Aegean sea to the Libyan sea is a big trip among peaks and valleys. |
|  | Agriculture The presence of olive trees invades the largest part of the island. They are grown even in steep slopes. For some days, we always saw olive groves everywhere. In some areas, specially in the south, greenhouses compete with olive trees for the land. Of course, there are also vineyards, citrus, orchards and cereals but definitely, the Cretan culture par excellence is the olive tree.
Cretan society has suffered a radical change in their customs. Scenes from a recent past can be seen in the ethnography museum of Vori, near Faistos, or in the fabulous collection of photographs of Nelly's, Faces of Crete. |
| | Tourism Archaeological tourism or beach tourism? Both are interesting. Palaces such as Knossos (always too crowded), Malia and Phaistos, other archaeological sites such as Gortyna, the ruins of the ancient cities of Gournia, Falasarna or Polyrrinia must be visited.
There are wonderful beaches all around the island. I enjoyed very much some beaches in the south coast (Libyan sea) such as Myrtos, Ierapetra or Lentas, where the sea was calm, in contrast with the northern ones, like Hersonisos, where wind was blowing for all the days we stayed there. The west coast is wonderful and we could enjoy a nice bath at Falasarna. Our last bath in Crete was in a beach very close to Rethymno.
For those who prefer nature tourism, there are plenty of gorges and ravines all around Crete. Samaria gorge is worldwide known, but there are also many other places to enjoy nature during your holidays.
The main cities such as Herakleio, Agios Nikolaos, Hania and Rethymno have to be visited, otherwise, the tour of Crete would not be complete. |
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