Trying to find your Crete accommodation for your upcoming trip? Crete is a fantastic, diverse island which offers an array of activities to those looking for calm village life, delicious food, immersive cultural experiences, lazy days on the beach or fresh air in the rugged mountains. Cretans are lucky to call their gorgeous island home, a place with olive groves, vineyards, aromatic herbs and rich seas.
To find the most exciting accommodation in Crete, we decided to give a new Heraklion hotel a try: Legacy Gastro Suites. This is a brand new luxury hotel with a unique concept, which, in our opinion, is also perfect for an amazing Cretan honeymoon. We spent a few nights in Legacy Gastro Suites and we wanted to discover what makes it so different than any other Crete accommodation you could book online. We talked to the staff, we ate a lot of their great food and engaged in some incredible activities which involved wine, food and quaint villages.
Finding the right hotel in Heraklion
When visiting Crete, Heraklion is a great place for a base. For one, it offers very good connections to other villages all around the island. It’s also a port city, so you can take trips to other Greek islands if you wish. It also offers the city vibe, combined with the laid back Cretan lifestyle where people take things easier. It’s the island life combined with the vibrancy of a shopping destination.
For outdoors enthusiasm, Crete, in general, is a fantastic island. You can cycle, hike or just walk for hours around beautiful villages. No matter where you find yourself, you’ll be overwhelmed by the Crete hospitality, where people still believe in real human connections.
You might find yourself in villages which remained trapped in time. Imagine old ladies knitting by the fire, men with moustaches gathered around driving local spirits, sharing youthful tales. Colourful tables, colourful chairs, artisan motifs and blooming gardens: this is Crete in all its splendour.
Finding the right hotel in Heraklion proved quite easy for us. We were lucky with our first stay in Legacy Gastro Suites because we got to experience something truly authentic. Legacy Gastro Suites was created to inspire new generations to remember the importance of tradition in a modern context. Times are changing, but the core of a nation can be preserved through books, local produce and almighty food.
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And so, we embarked on our own adventure in Crete and allowed ourselves to have a practical culinary affair right in our hotel room, in the heart of Heraklion.
Our Crete Accommodation
It all started with our check-in experience. Legacy Gastro Suites prides itself in offering iconic hospitality so naturally, all staff went above and beyond to make us feel welcome. But the real interesting part started the moment we entered our suite. It was a wow moment, love at first sight.
Imagine a room which makes you feel like you entered your grandmothers living room. Cosy and lovely, with wooden shelves filled with books around your bed. Elegant furniture, with a comfortable sofa, a table and two chairs, a desk and a food station. Yet, despite the olden days feel to it, the suite is a 5-star luxury room. It takes an artist to preserve tradition and make it obvious in a modern context.
So what made it so very special? The food station in our room. Let us tell you about it and I promise, you’ll be so excited to see it in real life. The food station is a unique gastro experience meant to empower local producers from all over Greece. The food station consists of a wooden shelf filled with local produce which you can only find in various Greek islands. We are talking about good, honest food, from small producers. These items have been curated with a lot of love, by the hotel’s own food expert.
The way it works is very simple: you have a menu in your room which describes every item on the shelf. You can eat one or as many as your heart desire. Before opening something specific, you can ask the reception to organise a tasting for you as well. Beyond your own gastro experience in the hotel room, these items make wonderful souvenirs. You get to purchase something truly local for a good price and in exchange, you help your hotel as well as the independent producer. As a result, everyone is part of a good ecosystem which is meant to help rather than destroy as we’ve seen with many destinations which suffer from over tourism. An elegant solution, like the rooms at Legacy Gastro Suite.
Legacy Gastro Suites Food Station
We could probably talk about our gastronomic experience in Crete for a very loooong time. In a nutshell, it was fantastic.
There is this saying in Crete that hospitality should be measured by the difference in weight for the guest before and after Crete. And that’s very fair! We think we added an extra size during our holiday in Crete. But, we are foodies, so it’s all great for us.
The food station in our suite had an array of products from all over Greece. Our mini bar (which wasn’t so mini after all) contained all sort of cold cuts and cheeses from Crete. There was a big rack full of bottles of wine as well. Pretty much the perfect room for honeymooners who want to celebrate their new beginnings while enjoying food and wine in their room.
Unlike many luxury hotel rooms which we visited, we loved that our suite came with a table and two chairs. This enabled us to dine in the room and have a la carte breakfast without struggling to eat in bed or at the desk. This was a nice touch for a hotel which prides itself in delivering a true gastronomic experience. As mentioned, the main attraction was the food station and that’s because of the unusual products we found there.
For example, there was a jar of sapphire, which turns out is a type of marine algae full of goodies. It was delicious and I got one for home as well. There were jars of mushrooms, and of course local olives. There were dried fruits and vegan energy balls presented in s beautiful gift box. Some unusual products too, like a type of truffle butter, special olive oils with blood orange or truffle. We found the sweetest raisings and the saltiest salt with herbs in it. We loved our thyme honey and the myriad of marmalades and jams. Of course, there was a shelf dedicated to all sort of local spirits and as previously mentioned, a shelf dedicated to red and white wines. There are teas available too, all herbal created from aromatic local herbs indigenous to Crete. In fact, when you order a cup of tea in Crete, it is automatically believed you will get a mountain tea which is a herbal brew, a little tangy to the tongue.
As you can see, every single item in the food station has its own story. If you want to know more, please do ask the hotel staff to tell you all about it. They will happily engage in a story telling session so you can feel even more welcome and part of the Legacy Gastro Suite family.
Should you book a suite at the Legacy Gastro Suites?
We recommend it only if you want to have amazing customer service, epic adventures and delicious food. In other words! Yes, this is the most amazing Crete accommodation we found thus far, and we stayed in several hotels on the island. This luxury, new hotel in Heraklion has everything you need for an unforgetable stay.
And beyond luxury and gastronomy, it has soul, something which most accommodations lack nowadays. We couldn’t be happier that we got to experience the Legacy iconic hospitality and we’d be back there in a heart beat.
During your stay, please engage in some local activities too. Of course, eating your way around Greece right from the food station is the number one thing to do in Crete, but we recommend having a wine tasting and a day trip around the island. The hotel staff can recommend some great companies for these.
And before you leave, don’t forget to check the downstairs food gallery to pick up even more goodies for the journey back home and get some delicious souvenirs for your family and friends.
Book your stay at the Legacy Gastro Suite
What do you say? Are you excited to experience the nicest accommodation in Crete?
Thank you Legacy Gastro Suites for sponsoring this post and making our stay in Crete possible. We loved your gastro suite and we are impressed by your truly iconic hospitality. All opinions in this piece are our own.
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