Crete tourist guide

The recently published Risk Map 2025 classifies Greece as a “low risk” country for travel, highlighting the country’s resilience to potential crises. The Risk Map is an interactive tool, developed by Safeture and Riskline, that assesses global travel risk on five levels: negligible, low, medium, high and critical.

The map assesses safety, crime, healthcare quality, political unrest, and the risk of sudden climate events such as storms and floods. Regular updates are designed to help you plan safer trips.

The SS Heraklion ferry disaster, which occurred on 7-8 December 1966, is one of the most moving events that took place in Greece. It is still not fully known how many victims were lost to the sea. At the time of the tragedy, many people were asleep, so they had no time to react and no chance to escape. There was no early warning and no coordinated efforts by the crew to help those who were running around the corridor in panic looking for an escape route. Those who fell into the cold sea began to fight for their lives, remaining in the water for many hours. Despite an SOS message broadcast by radio, for many hours no one rushed to rescue the drowning passengers of the ferry. The last living person was pulled out of the water 13 hours after the ship sank.

Fortunately, some lessons were learned after this disaster and the regulations in force in Greek shipping were changed. The moving sculpture "Monument of the Hand" by sculptor Antonio Papatzanaki also reminds us of this tragedy. It is located in Chania in Talos Square, where it was erected in 1990 in memory of the victims of the SS Heraklion. Today, on the anniversary of the disaster, a small ceremony was held at the monument to commemorate these events.

Georgioupoli, located near Chania, is one of many typical tourist towns located in this region of Crete. One of the biggest advantages of this town is its excellent sandy beach. However, what is particularly memorable for most people visiting Georgioupoli is the modest chapel of Saint Nicholas, located on the local coast. The small white building located on a rocky piece of land creates a picture postcard. You can see how picturesque this place is by watching the film below.

After 16 consecutive months of higher temperatures for Crete compared to the 2010-2019 average, there has finally been a change. November 2024 was the first month with temperatures below the average calculated for the same period. However, the negative deviation is small and amounts to only -0.1.

At the same time, last November was recorded as the second coldest November since 2010, since 53 Greek weather stations have been operating continuously. A similar anomaly was recorded not only in Crete, but also in the Aegean Islands.

Several young people will certainly remember their trip to the highest peak in Crete for a long time. Last Friday, when a group of five men aged 21-26 began their escapade, unfortunately none of them anticipated any potential difficulties. A lack of imagination resulted in the disregard of basic rules of moving along mountain trails and the necessity of spending two nights on the mountaintop.

The Cretan village of Anogia, located at the foot of the Psiloritis massif, has been included in the list of the Best Tourist Villages of 2024. The list was prepared by the World Tourism Organization (UN Tourism).

By Tomisti - Own work , CC BY-SA 4.0 , Link