Flights to Crete

[duckdodgers]

Hi, planning ahead

We tend to drive to France every year and book our accomodation through Owners Direct or similar, always with its own pool. However next year we fancy returning to Crete (had a lovely holiday there many years ago) - and Ive seen some lovely villas with their own pools on Owners Direct. But Ive never booked flights myself and transfers so I feel a novice - who does flights to Crete from Glasgow that are reasonable and do you book your villa first?

Also how do you get to it from the airport - Heraklion is where the airport is and Crete is pretty much spread out - I would assume you need to hire a car - so is it best to do this in the Uk before we go or when we arrive?

Have hired a car in Crete before and found it relatively starightforward but that was when we were already in an apartment and not relying on it to get us there!

Any tips welcome!!

Don't know who flies direct from Glasgow to Heraklion or Chania, but if you check skyscanner.co.UK, you can easily find any airlines who do that route and which days they fly it.

We always book direct like this and you're right, owners direct have some lovely villas on offer around Crete.

Suggest you work out who flies and into which airport as they're a distance apart. Then find a villa you fancy reasonably close by (hour or so drive?), check the availability with the owner and ask them to hold your dates while you book the flights, then presuming you get the flights you want, pay the villa's deposit.

Then check out car hire, direct from airport. We sometimes book via Quidco etc to get cash back, but sometimes if you google eg Heraklion car rent, you can find a local company and ask for a quote. With a local company, not herz etc, I always counter-offer in Greece (bartering seems ok as long as yr polite there!). Last time from Heraklion we got a decent sized car, 5 doors, air con etc, high season for ?200/week all in incl fancy excess.

HTH -planning's so much fun for holidays

You can fly to Heraklion from Glasgow airport or to Chania from Prestwick. We hired a car through our tour operator Simpson Travel so they may be able to advise. Chania well worth a visit.

Crete's so easy to drive around - we are desperate to go back but it looks like we are camping in the West of Scotland this year!

TRL - thank you so much, you have been very helpful!

When we were last in Crete we had hired a car in the UK via Thomas Cook before we went - who never told us you had to have a big excess available on our credit card. We had the car 1 day...before they came and took it off us! So then we had to use some of our spending money hiring a car there. This time its going to be planned better

norman I didnt realise you could fly to Chania from Prestwick, we are actually in Ayrshire, thanks for that

Hope you enjoy your time camping - I live in the West of Scotland and if you get the weather (no guarantee obviously!) camping would be fantastic. Where are you camping?

We are thinking of camping on Mull and maybe taking a visit to
Iona and doing some boat trips. It'll be fun as long as it doesn't rain (much)