Unpacked: Rambling Aboard the Ancient Aircraft Carrier Named Crete

Winding roads, Venetian walls, and cliff-top monasteries with a sense of history.

Anthony Grant/The New York Sun
The lower portion of the Preveli monastery, destroyed by the Nazis following the Battle of Crete in World War II. Anthony Grant/The New York Sun

HERAKLION — There are no hotels at Tymbaki, a place renowned for nothing, though a well-known guidebook series calls it the ugliest town in Crete. It’s a place where watermelons grow like weeds and one that, for the foregoing reasons and others, I find almost impossible to resist in the heat of summer. 

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