Agios Nikolaos

Agios Nikolaos is small, and the reason people come is not the town but what is across the water.

The town itself is a harbour settlement at the head of the Mirabello Bay: a curved waterfront with excursion boats, fishing boats, and mountains rising on both sides of the bay. In the centre is Lake Voulismeni, a little lagoon about sixty metres deep that was cut through to the sea by a channel in 1870 and gives the town its particular light. It is small enough to walk in half an hour, which is about as much as there is to do in it.

What people come for is the far side of the bay. Spinalonga is a Venetian fortress island built on top of an ancient fort, used as a leper colony until 1957, and now reached by boat from here, from Elounda or from Plaka. Elounda, nine kilometres south, is a lagoon village with the sunken ancient harbour of Olous lying off its shore.

And underneath all of it is the archaeological story, which is substantial. Lato, the classical city, stood on the ridge immediately above the modern harbour with an extensive Roman cemetery. Priniatikos Pyrgos, a few kilometres along the coast, was occupied from around 3000 BC to Roman times and is one of the longest continuously inhabited sites in Europe. The town's own museum, founded in 1970, holds the grave goods from the Early Minoan cemetery at Agia Fotia.

The harbour has been a port since antiquity, and the name is newer: Agios Nikolaos is the patron saint of fishermen, which is what the town was named for.

The salt trade is the source of the town's earlier prosperity. Under Venetian rule the bay exported salt, and by the period of the Greek state and into the last century Crete's north-east coast was one of the Mediterranean's working ports. The tourism that replaced it is very recent — Spinalonga as a destination, the cruise and day-boat traffic, and the second homes.

The archaeological record around the town is deep. Lato, the classical city at Lato pros Kamara, is one of the best-preserved ancient sites of eastern Crete, with a fortification circuit and a large Roman cemetery; it gave its name to Lato Etera, which is its modern successor further inland. Stephanus of Byzantium records both Olous and Lato — Lato only as an alternative name of the city of Kamara — but neither has a foundation tradition attached to it in any source.

Priniatikos Pyrgos, excavated since 2007 by the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens, is the site to see if you want the long view of Crete: a headland settlement with continuous occupation from the Final Neolithic through to Roman times.

Agios Nikolaos is a harbour town with the bay either side of it, so the beaches are a short walk or a short drive rather than a beach under the town.

The nearest is Ammoudi, about a kilometre out on the eastern side of the head of the bay — sheltered, sandy, and the one to use if you only have a morning. Kitroplatia is the sandy strip beside Lake Voulismeni, effectively in the town centre, which is convenient and busy rather than beautiful. And there is an island, Agioi Pantes, close in in the bay itself.

South along the coast is where the real swimming is. Elounda, at about nine kilometres, is a lagoon village whose beach is the base for the boats to Spinalonga; Plaka, at about twelve, is the village on the hill above it, which has the best of the views across to the island. Istron, at about thirteen, has Istron Megalos and Mikros Gialos, both proper sandy beaches.

Inland, Kritsa at about fifteen kilometres is the largest Lasithi village and sits at the top of the Kritsa gorge, and Kalo Chorio, at about sixteen, is the mountain village that is the base for the Lasithi plateau and the Zaros area. The other port of the region, Neapoli, is sixteen kilometres east.

If you want the long sandy strands, Crete's north coast is not where they are — that is the south and the west.

Eastern Crete cooking, which is one of the better regional kitchens on the island and much less tourist-shaped than the coast in the west.

The Cretan basics hold — the olive oil, which here is among the best in Greece and mostly single-estate, the cheeses, the mountain herbs, the honey. The local specialties of Lasithi are the cheeses, the honey from the plateau, and the mountain vegetables.

Seafood is the other half, and in Agios Nikolaos it is caught in the bay and landed in front of you. Grilled fish and octopus, whatever the boats brought in that morning, is the thing to order. The tavernas along the waterfront do it competently; the better cooking is a short way inland, where the Cretan food is actually Cretan rather than adapted to visitors.

May and June are the best months: warm enough to swim comfortably before the meltemi, and green. September and October are excellent and are the best swimming of the year. July and August are hot and busy, and the meltemi can make boat trips to Spinalonga rough, which is worth checking locally before you book one. November to March is mild and quiet, with the off-season prices that makes eastern Crete a very different place to visit from January, though there is less to do. May is also the month of the system of winter rains ending, and everything from the olive groves upward responds to it.

Agios Nikolaos has no airport; Sitia, about 35 km away, is the nearest one. The town sits on the coastal road from Heraklion, some sixty kilometres further along the coast.

A car is worth having for the south-coast beaches and for the Lasithi plateau, though the town itself needs none. Book boat trips to Spinalonga ahead in July and August, and ask about the sea conditions, which can turn rough in the meltemi. The Archaeological Museum is small and free of the worst of the summer crush early in the day. And if you are here in spring, drive up to the Lasithi plateau at lunchtime — it is a completely different Crete, and it is only forty minutes away.