nothing fixed | 8 nights | from $1,780 per person
Crete Vacation Package: Eight Nights, One Car, Empty Days
A Crete vacation package that books the bed and the car and stops there. Eight nights in the west of the island, gorges and beaches within a morning's drive, and every hour of every day left to you.
What nothing fixed means here
We book two things and then stop. A room in the west of the island for all eight nights, and a small car with your name on the paperwork at the airport counter. After that the days are blank. No guide, no coach, no group, no set dinner, no morning anybody expects you at. A Crete vacation package arranged this way gives you a bed, a set of keys and a road sheet, and leaves the deciding to you over breakfast.
- Hours already spoken for
- Zero hours on seven of the eight days. Day one carries the 55 minute drive from the airport to the room, and that is the only obligation printed anywhere in the paperwork.
- The earliest you must be somewhere
- 9:40am on the final morning, to have the car back at the airport counter before the flight. One morning out of eight has a clock time attached to it.
- The longest stretch that is yours
- About 178 hours, from the moment you park on day one until the car is due back. Nothing is booked inside that stretch, so nothing interrupts it.
- Who chooses where you eat
- You do, every time. No guide is booked and no group is waiting, and the only timetable in the trip belongs to the two south coast boats, which you use or ignore.
- What happens if you skip a day
- Nothing happens and no money comes back. The room is paid by the night and the car by the day whether you leave the parking space or not, so a day spent reading on the balcony costs the same as a day spent driving 190 kilometers.
- Who this shape of day does not suit
- Anyone who will not drive. The roads are narrow, unlit after dark, and most of what the road sheet names cannot be reached any other way. It also suits nobody who wants the days handled for them, because no one here will build you an itinerary or pick your dinner.
The last row costs this company bookings and stays on the page anyway. A shape of day that does not suit you is far cheaper to find out about here than on the third morning.
Inside the $1,780
- Eight nights in one room in the west of the island, two people sharing, with off-street parking included and not billed separately
- A car for the full eight days, collected and returned at the airport, with the second driver already named and the damage excess already bought down to zero
- A 14-page road sheet: 26 beaches with the surface of the last kilometer named, 9 gorges with the walking time each way, and the four fuel stations that exist on the south coast
- Sailing times for the two south coast boats that reach villages the road does not, rechecked in the month you travel
- Breakfast in the room rate on all eight mornings, served late enough that nobody sets an alarm for it
- One phone number that reaches a person in the region who speaks English, for the length of the trip
Costs that stay yours
- Getting to the island. Budget $780 to $1,150 per person from the east coast in shoulder season, and more than that in July
- Fuel, roughly $95 to $140 across eight days if you drive the south coast twice
- Every meal except breakfast. Village tavernas run $14 to $26 a head with wine
- Gorge entry fees where they are charged, $6 to $9 per person
- Travel insurance, visas and entry permits. We arrange none of the three, for anybody, and you should settle them yourself long before you fly
What it costs
from $1,780 per person
- Covering
- 8 nights, self-driven stay from one base, empty diary.
- Assuming
- Two people to a room, unless the six rows above say otherwise for your case.
- Pushed up by
- The month, the grade of room, how late you leave it, and how many of the hours you want somebody else to hold.
- Fixed when
- An operator puts it in writing with its own name on it. Until then it marks the bottom of a range that genuinely happened.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. This site gathers nothing and no card ever arrives at this company.
Months that suit this and months that do not
May, early June, September and the first half of October. The sea is swimmable from the last week of May into October, the gorge paths are open, the roads are dry, and the light holds long enough to get back from the south coast before dark.
Late July and August we would talk you out of, and not only for the 36C on a gravel path. The west coast beaches sit at the end of single-track roads that carry four hours of car traffic a day in high summer. You would spend the free day you paid for sitting in it.
November to March the room rate drops and the island empties, and most of what the road sheet points at is shut or cut off. Gorge routes close after heavy rain and stay closed for days. That is a genuinely different trip, and we would rather sell you the different trip than this one in the wrong month.
Still open when you book
Three things get settled at confirmation, not before. Which of the two western bases you take: the town of 1,100 people with a bakery on the square, or the quieter one twelve minutes inland from the water. Which car, because the small one costs less to fuel and the estate is the only one that swallows two large bags and a cool box. Whether the car is waiting at arrivals on the night you land or picked up in town the next morning, which changes what you pay for the first night of parking.