Great apartment, that is in the heart of Heraklion, Crete. It is situated with great views of the sea, and within walking distance to shopping, restaurants, and the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.
Burger Lab, that is found just below, and behind the apartment complex, has some pretty good burgers, and my daughter, who is vegan, enjoyed the veggie burger, and claimed it was better than anything she found in the US. The beef burgers were also very good.
If you walk straight up that walking path in front of Burger Lab, you will get to the main squares of Heraklion, where you can find nice cafes to sit at for your morning coffee, and other shopping and restaurants along all of Heraklion’s shopping corridors.
Around those squares you will also find Amalia’s Kitchen, and this place had good food as well, this restaurant was opened by a Greek lady who lived in Houston, TX for 30 years, and she had some Tex/Mex on the menu, that was also very well done. Fajitas came out on sizzling iron skillets.
We also of course enjoyed all the Greek food Heraklion and Crete had to offer, All the restaurants we visited were very good, but being that we were already into our fifth week of our Greek vacation when we visited Crete, finding some really good US type food, helped our kids, who really missed some good burgers, and Mexican food, so I included those places in my review ;)
Airbnb hosts Michalis and Idomeneas were attentive and responded quickly to our questions.
AC is one large and modern external unit, that sat outside the rear balcony, it is plumbed to individual internal fan chiller units, that were in all the rooms of the apartment. The central AC took a couple of hours after checking in, to get it running super cold, but after that, the AC kept this very large apartment cold across all the rooms.
The apartments bed linens, towels and robes, were all white and smelled clean. Bed mattresses and pillows were all firm and supportive, and we all slept well on the beds, and the pillows provided.
Apartment has a modern upscale European decor, and it is actually three individual apartments that were very well combined into one very large apartment, no detail was left out when they renovated and combined these apartments into one mega apartment.
The 5 bedrooms were all sized well, and did not feel cramped, many of the bedrooms had walk in closets. We were there with my brothers family, and the apartment was big enough for eight people 4 adults and 4 kids, but one of my brothers sons did need to sleep on a couch, linens and pillows for the couch were already available in the closets by our Airbnb hosts.
Bathrooms were clean and modern, bathroom fixtures were all upscale, with some unique fixtures like the egg shaped toilet in the main powder room, and a super thin sink in one of the other bathrooms.
Parking is available at a cost below the building, but you can sometimes find parking in front of the apartment at the designated street parking cutouts along the main road that is between the building, and the sea. Those street parking cutouts allow you to park your car for as long as you want, we left our car out there for at least 36 hours without any issues.
Washer has a built in dryer which was great, the washing and drying cycle is long, but you could just let it run at night, and by morning it will have clean clothing ready for you without the inconvenience of having to hang them up to dry. There is also a drying rack at the back balcony to help dry your beach towels and bathing suits after a day at the many beautiful beaches of Crete.
Crete is a very large island, and to see many of it sites and beaches you will need time to see them all, we stayed 5 days, but we probably should have stayed longer, we will obviously be back.
The town of Agios Nikolaos just 1 hour east of Heraklion is just a beautiful seaside town, and a must to visit when you go to Crete.
Because of Crete’s size you need a car for this island. Bring one from the mainland on the ferry, or rent one in Crete.
Probably one of the best Airbnb’s in Crete, well worth the price we paid, we enjoyed staying at this apartment, and it did not feel claustrophobic like other European apartments, it seemed it was sized for Americans, but it maintained a modern European aesthetic.