Get that wrong and the wrong airport alone can cost you a two-hour cross-island drive on day one.
The answer, and it is specific
Rethymno and the north-coast beach towns suit families for space and easy swimming, while Chania’s old town and the quiet east around Elounda suit couples.
Rethymno sits centre-west and gives you an old town plus a long town beach - which is the combination that makes it the all-rounder. It also works from either airport, about an hour from each, which removes the airport gamble entirely.
- Chania is the prettiest Venetian old town and the best food, but it comes with old-town stairs and parking.
- Heraklion is a working port city - gritty, not a resort - and the base for Knossos, the museum and the ferries, usually for one or two nights rather than a week.
- Agios Nikolaos and Elounda, out east, are quieter and resort-led, spread out and far from most things.
Where to stay in Crete covers the regions properly.
Fly into the right airport
West base, fly Chania. Central or eastern base, fly Heraklion. Heraklion “Nikos Kazantzakis” (HER) sits about 5 km east of Heraklion; Chania “Ioannis Daskalogiannis” (CHQ) is out on the Akrotiri peninsula, about 14 km from Chania town.
With children the penalty for getting this wrong is not just the drive out - it is the drive back, at the end of a week, to an early flight. Heraklion airport to Chania is the page on exactly that mistake.
The famous beaches are real, and they are far
This is the thing to plan around rather than discover. Crete’s famous beaches are real, and they are far.
The postcard lagoons of the west - Elafonisi’s pink-tinged sand and shallow turquoise water, Balos’s sandbar strung between the headlands - are genuine day trips, not a stroll from your hotel, and the drive is the catch. Elafonisi is roughly a two-hour drive from Chania; Balos is reached either by a rough unpaved road or by boat from Kissamos. Either one eats a full day.
With small children, one of those is a day out. Two in a week is a driving holiday. Plan the rest of the beach time around your base instead - that is what the north-coast towns are for.
Do you need a car
For Chania, Rethymno and Heraklion along the north coast, not necessarily. For the beaches, gorges, mountain villages and the south coast, effectively yes: a car is what turns a single base into the whole region.
The move that makes a longer trip work
For a full-island trip, fly open-jaw: into one airport, drive the island once, and out of the other. You never double back, and the 250 km spine becomes a route instead of a return leg.
With children, that is also the version with the fewest repeated drives - which is usually what decides whether the week felt like a holiday. The Crete itinerary is built on exactly that shape.
What this page will not tell you
It will not tell you a beach is safe or suitable for your child. “Shallow turquoise water” is our own description of a lagoon, not a rating - read the flags and the local advice rather than a guide on the day. Nothing here is a certification; our editorial policy says so.
Our Crete guide has the practicalities and Greece with kids covers choosing the island.