With the city of Hania as a base, getting around the north coast is easy enough: it's a heavily populated region with excellent roads and a stream of buses along the main routes. Trying to get off the beaten track presents more of a problem if you're dependent on public transport. On the Rodopou peninsula, for example, there are no regular services at all and while most inland villages are served by at least a couple of daily buses, it can be frustrating if you want to get to several in a day. Renting a vehicle or motorcycle is a good investment, and there are plenty of outlets in Hania. Just remember that this is mountainous country - the smaller mopeds are (more or less) all right for one person, but with two people on board they simply won't make it up many of the hills.

HANIA, as any of its residents will tell you, is the spiritual capital of Crete, even if the title is now officially bestowed on Iraklion's urban sprawl. With its shimmering waterfront, crumbling masonry and web of alleys, it is an extraordinarily attractive city, especially if you can catch it in spring when the Lefka Ori's (white mountains) snowcapped peaks seem to hover above the roofs. The permanent population - fast expanding into hill and coastal suburbs - always outnumbers the tourists, although in August visitors seem to run them pretty close. Hania has plenty to fill a good day or two's sight­seeing, and highlights include the Venetian harbours, a quartet of museums dealing with archeological, naval, Byzantine and folklore themes, as well as plenty of Minoan ruins dotted throughout the old town. But the best pleasure of all, per­haps, is to be had wandering the narrow streets and stepped alleyways of the old quarters filled with Venetian and Turkish architectural gems - vestiges of a time when the city was a jewel of the Mediterranean. Include plentiful accommodation and tavernas, excellent markets, stores and nightlife, and it all adds up to a city Worth getting to know, and - once you've been seduced by its charms - where you'll almost certainly stay longer than you intended.

Modern Hania sprawls in every direction, encircling the old town. With time on your hands, there are parts that are worth the walk. Starting from in front of the market, the areas to the southwest, on the way to Platia 1866 and the bus station, have an attractively old-fashioned commercial­Ism about them, full of general stores stocking the essentials of village life.
Heading southeast from the market, Tzanakaki leads to places of more specific interest. First of these is the Public Gardens, a few hundred metres up on the left. 1-aid out by a Turkish pasha in the nineteenth century, they include a few caged animals (not really enough to call a zoo, but there are kri-kri, ponies, loud monkeys and birds), a cafe where you can sit under the trees and a children's play area. The open-air auditorium is often used as a cinema, and is also the setting for local cer­emonies and folklore displays which can be enjoyable - look in to see what's on.

Carry on down the street, then take the second left onto Sfakianaki and you come to the Historical Museum and Archives (Mon-Fri 9am-1pm, free), Wh«h consists of a couple of gloomy rooms in a small and undistinguished grey building" with poorly labelled photos, a few revolutionary arms from the struggle against the Turks and relics of Venizelos, and many more rooms filled with musty books. At the and of Sfakianaki, about 500m southeast of the Public Gardens, is Platias, with a statue of Venizelos in the centre and an imposing court build ing along the south side.
This court house was originally the government build. ing built for Prince George's short-lived administration. From here Odos Papandreou (the former Dimokratias, which was renamed after Greece’s recently deceased former prime minister) leads back to the centre, running past the rear of the Public Gardens and ending opposite the market again, Alternatively, you can follow Iroon Politechniou, which runs due north from Platia Eleftherias down to the sea. A broad avenue divided by trees and lined with large houses, interspersed with several expensive garden restaurants and a number of fashionable cafe-bars where you can sit outdoors, it makes for an interest. ing walk in a part of the city very different from that dominated by the tourist crowds of Halidon.