Tourism


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Crete offers a great range of activities, including water sports, biking, hiking, climbing, and many places that one can visit, including archaeological sites, monasteries and monuments, among others. You can find general information here.

Activities in Crete

Biking / Climbing

• A full range of organised activities is proposed in this link (as well as in other links you can find on the web).
  Psiloritis mountain and Lefka Ori (White Mountains) offer a great experience for hiking.
• If you are interested in climbing, some suggestions for the region of Rethymnon can be found here.

Hiking

• The Samaria gorge is one of the most famous European gorges, so if you have time and you like hiking, you should explore it.
• Other (shorter) gorges (e.g. the Aradena gorge), plateaus or ecosystems of Crete.
• for a full description of paths and level of difficultly, see this link. Note that you can set criteria regarding the location, the path length and the level of difficulty.

Water sports/sea activities
Crete offers a great range of water activities including kayaking, windsurfing, scuba diving, fishing, sailing. You can find suggestions here.

Places to visit

Museums
For the entire list of museums you can check this link and choose depending on your personal interests. Here are a few that are easy to reach:

• The Archaeological Museum of Heraklion hosts a very important collection of artifacts from the Bronze-age Minoan culture.
• The Historical Museum of Crete in Heraklion offers a view of Cretan history from the early Christian period to the 20th century.
• The Archaeological Museum of Rethymnon is also interesting.

Archaeological sites

• Archaeological sites inside Rethymnon
  
  • Make sure you visit Fortezza castle, Megali Porta, Rimondi Fountain, Loggia, the Turkish Minaret. You can find more about Rethymnon here.
  
  
• Top archaeological sites to visit outside Rethymnon:
  • The Minoan palace of Knossos, the center of the Minoan civilization, located 5 kilometres from the city of Heraklion.
  • The Minoan palace of Phaistos, located 78 km from Rethymnon. If you go to Phaistos, you may want to visit the nearby Matala beach. It is a beach with many caves, made famous in the late 60's and 70's because hippies used to live there.
  • Ancient Eleftherna, a prominent ancient city-state of Crete, inhabited around 2000BC, located 27km outside the city of Rethymnon.

Chania
Chania is a very popular destination in Crete due to its well preserved old town, its Venetian harbour and its architecture. For more information visit this link.

Beaches
Beaches in / close to Rethymnon

• The beach of Rethymnon is located 1km east of the city center.
• Platanias beach lies 4 km east of Rethymnon. You can reach it by city bus.
• Episkopi beach is located 14 km west of Rethymnon. You can reach it by inter-city bus.
• Geropotamos beach is located 18 km east of Rethymnon. You can reach it by inter-city bus.

Beaches south of Rethymnon
In the south of Rethymnon, you can enjoy a view of rocky mountains with sandy beaches. For a full list of the beaches south of Rethymnon, check here. Below are listed some of the most well known beaches south of Rethymnon, but wherever you go, it will be a very nice experience.

• Preveli beach and how to get there.
• Souda
• Agios Pavlos
• Triopetra beach

If you want to explore other beaches of Crete outside Rethymnon, you can look here.

Famous Beaches in the south-west of Chania:

• Balos and Gramvousa
• Elafonissi
• Falasarna

Monasteries
Outside Rethymnon, but close by, are located the following monasteries:

• Arkadi (22 km from the city of Rethymnon)
• Preveli (34 km from the city of Rethymnon). Next to the monastery is the popular Preveli beach.
• Other monasteries in the region of Rethymnon can be found here.
• An interesting monastery in the Lasithi region (223 km from Rethymnon) is Toplou Monastery with its unique wine.

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