Crete with a Toddler: What Actually Works

Crete is one of the easier places in Europe to take a two-year-old, and one of the easier places to get slightly wrong. The difference is almost entirely which month you book and how high up the hill your villa sits. Here is the version we would give a friend, including the part where we tell you not to book us at all.

Choose the month before you choose the villa

Heraklion averages, which is the coast rather than the interior:

Read the sea column as carefully as the air column. May is the trap. The air is pleasant and the water is 19°C, which an adult calls refreshing and a toddler calls unbearable — and a small child who will not go in the sea changes the shape of a beach holiday considerably.

September is the answer for most families with a toddler. Twenty-seven degrees, a sea still holding 24.5°C from the summer, and the crowds gone. June is the other good month. July and August are hot enough that you will be organising the whole day around shade.

The coast and the hills are two different climates

This catches people out. Coastal Heraklion averages 29.4°C in August, which is fine. But when a heat wave arrives from Africa, the hottest places in Crete are the hills of the interior, and 40°C is possible — and the hills are precisely where the beautiful villas are.

If you are booking July or August with a small child, a villa fifteen minutes inland with a lovely view may be five or six degrees warmer at three in the afternoon than the town below it. Ask the owner what the terrace is like at midday, and whether there is shade that exists in the afternoon rather than only in the photograph.

Then check the pool, before anything else

We made this point in our piece on multigenerational villa weeks and it matters twice as much with a toddler: Greek villa pools are very often unfenced, frequently level with the terrace, and photographed from the angle that makes that look charming.

Ask directly. Ask about steps, about the drop at the edge of the terrace, and about whether the gate to the road actually latches. A villa is not childproofed because it is expensive.

Bring, hire, or buy there

Bring the things specific to your child — the sleep bag they know, the cup they will accept, enough of the medicine whose Greek name you cannot read. Bring sun protection rather than buying it, since you will use more than you expect at twelve hours of daily sunshine.

Ask the villa about cots, high chairs and stair gates before you pack them; most supply at least the first two. Buggies are less useful here than you think — old-town cobbles and village pavements defeat them, and a carrier is the better tool for Chania or Rethymno.

The shape of the day that works

Crete already runs on a rhythm that suits small children, which is why it is easier here than in northern Europe.

Beach or pool early, before the sun means it. A long lunch at one. Everyone sleeps through the worst of the afternoon, adults included. Out again at six. And then dinner at nine, which sounds impossible with a toddler until you realise they have slept for two hours and that a Greek taverna at nine o'clock is full of children, none of whom are being shushed. Nobody will look at you. That is the single biggest difference from home. There are more ideas along these lines in our ten things to do in Crete with kids in the evening.

And do not book us

Plainly: a toddler will not watch a film. Not ours, not anyone's, not in any month or package. They will be delighted by the screen for four minutes, alarmed by the sound, and then would like to walk around in the dark near the pool. It is €450 to discover this.

The film cannot start until it is properly dark, which even in late September is around half past seven and in August is closer to half past eight. That is bedtime with the volume up.

There are two exceptions and they are real. If you have an older child of about seven and up, and the little one will be asleep indoors with a monitor while the rest of you watch — that works, and it is one of the better evenings of the week. And if it is a group of adults and the children are all in bed by the time we start, that also works.

Otherwise, come back in three years. We would rather say so now than take the booking and watch you carry a crying two-year-old inside during the opening credits.

If your children are older and you want an evening at the villa, tell us their ages and the date and we will tell you honestly whether it will land.