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Heraklion airport to Elounda transfer
Elounda Information |
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Elounda is a world famous holiday destination that is renown for its exclusive environment and the rich and famous visitors. It is situated athe east side of Crete a few kilometers away from the town of Agios Nikolaos.
It is one of the most famous cosmopolitan destinations and it showcases some of the world’s most outstanding hotel resorts.
The village of Elounda is rather small and not particularly beautiful what is amazing though in the area, is the wild landscape and the amazing color of the crystal clear sea.
The coastline forms plenty of small beaches that enhance the sense of exclusive creating some sort of lagoons inside the sea. Opposite Elounda the island of Spinalonga can be seen. Spinalonga Island used to be inhibited by the lepers until the middle of 20th century and today the ruins of this particular village built still stand.
The resort apart of its stunning natural beauty owes a large part of its reputation to its famous visitors. World statesmen, prime ministers, members of royal families and national as well as international celebrities of stage and screen repeatedly choose Elounda as their holiday destination.
This is also due to the fact that a mosaic of hyper – lux hotels are located here such as: Elounda Beach – Elounda Bay Hotel – Porto Elounda De Luxe Hotel – Elounda Mare Hotel – The Peninsula All Suite Hotel – Elounda Gulf Villas & Suites – Blue Palace Hotel - Pleiades Luxurious Villas
The ancient city of Olous used to be where Elounda village is today and some of its ruins are still be seen at the edge of the peninsula but unfortunately, most of them are below sea level.
During summer, daily boat trips towards Spinalonga take place every hour since the island of the lepers as known in Crete has an alluring charm the minute one sets eyes on it, with the ghost city the deserted leper colony, the Venetian castle and the wild landscape.
Do not miss to visit the small village of Plaka that is also world famous, mainly for the freshness of the fish served on the taverns that lay on the seaside.
Even though there other places that might showcase luxury hotels and beautiful landscapes, Elounda has something unique that it is difficult to describe with words. The place has a positive aura that embraces the visitor from the first minute and it is from the few areas that everything seem to be in perfect harmony.
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Acquired from the Byzantine Empire at the start of the thirteenth century Spinalonga was to become in 1579, a crucial part of the Venetian powerbase for the next four centuries. Huge fortifications still dominate this tiny but strategically important islet.
The natural isolation and manmade defenses of this tiny island helped to manage to hold out against the Ottoman Empire for almost fifty years (from 1669 to 1715). From 1715 until the turn of the twentieth century the occupying Ottomans held it, and civilians populated it.
The island is renown for being one of the last active leper colonies in Europe, being used in this manner from 1903 until 1957.
There are two entrances to Spinalonga, one being the lepers' entrance, a tunnel known as Dante's Gate. However, the life on islet was not as bad as it sounds since once on the island the lepers received food, water, medical attention and social security payments.
Previously, such amenities had been unavailable to Crete's leprosy patients, as they mostly lived in the area's caves, away from civilization as they carried a deathly contaminating disease.
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