Crete tourist guide

This week, the "Minoas 2024" exercise was carried out in Crete to prepare for the earthquake and its consequences. Nearly 100,000 people took part in the event, which lasted from Monday to Wednesday, including not only relevant services and volunteers, but even residents of the island, including students from all schools. As part of the training, evacuations were carried out from hotels, companies, houses and public buildings.

One of the houses in Arkalochori destroyed in the 2021 earthquake
Photo source: flashnews.gr

Everything indicates that the decisions of the Greek Ministry of National Economy and Finance and the Ministry of the Environment have made quite a revolution in terms of relaxation on many famous beaches of Hellas. In recent days, a list of 198 Greek beaches located in Natura 2000 areas, i.e. areas of great ecological importance, where a regime of absolute protection will apply, has been published. This means, among other things, a ban on issuing licenses for placing deck chairs and umbrellas. This ban also covers 9 Natura 2000 areas in Crete. The places where such a regime will apply have been called "false beaches".

On April 16 this year the decision of Mrs. Maria Kozyrakis, Secretary of the Decentralized Administration of Crete, was published in the official journal regarding the topic "Regulation of matters related to the island of Chrissi for 2024". It is worth keeping this document in mind, because this very serious-sounding decision contains a number of regulations that directly apply to tourist cruises to this small island.

Chrissi Island - you won't see such a view on the beach this year
Photos licensed: CC BY-SA 2.0

It happens that more or less local wars and wars break out for quite trivial reasons. This time, the cause of a major dispute was the Sfakia cake, a local delicacy typical of the Sfakia region in Crete. Some media even write about a local vendetta, although no one has murdered anyone yet...

We invite you to watch a video of the passage of the section of the E4 trail between the towns of Agia Roumeli and Loutro. On the way we passed such characteristic points as the Agios Pavlos chapel, Marmara beach, the towns of Likos and Finikas. The total length of this section of the E4 trail is approximately 14 km, according to guidebooks. With breaks to rest and admire the landscapes, you should plan this trek like a full-day trip. In the variant presented in the video, we started the crossing early in the morning in Agia Roumeli and finished in the afternoon in Loutro. Finally, we returned to Agia Roumeli by the last ferry to this town.

Interesting conclusions for the tourism industry come from research conducted by Accor. Almost 20% of respondents in Europe declare that they will deliberately go on holiday outside the peak tourist season to avoid extremely severe heat. The research results confirm the observations of the largest tour operators in Europe and the USA that climate change is having an increasing impact on the preferences of travelers planning to visit the Mediterranean region.

Moni Katholiko is probably the oldest and most spectacularly situated monastery in Crete. It is located 20 km north-east of Chania, on the Akrotiri Peninsula near the exit of the Avlaki Gorge. Moni Katholiko can only be reached on foot because the road passable for cars ends in front of the parking lot located at the Gouverneto Monastery.
The monastery was abandoned by monks around the 16th-17th centuries after a series of pirate attacks. After abandoning Moni Katholiko, the monks founded a new monastery, which was located on the site of modern Moni Gouverneto.

In the last week of March, the first charter flights to Crete coincided with the Catholic Easter holidays, which made the beginning of the tourist season really optimistic. Only between March 22 and 31, 16,000 tourists flew to Crete. This means that for the entire month the result is better than the same period last year by as much as 46%.