Crete, slowly: a week at Phāea Cretan Malia

We went to Crete the way you do with a six-year-old and a two-year-old in tow: hopeful, a little over-packed, and braced for it to be harder than the brochure. It was not. It was, in fact, one of the easiest, happiest weeks we have had as a four.

The place

Phāea Cretan Malia sits on the north coast, just outside the village of Malia, low and quiet among gardens that have clearly been loved for years. It is a family-run place and a member of Design Hotels, which on paper sounds like it might be too polished for small children, and in practice was exactly the opposite. The design is earthy and unfussy, all chestnut wood, Cretan marble and botanical murals, the kind of room you do not mind little ones making a mess of.

The main pool is the masterstroke. It runs like a slow river through the gardens, with shallow sections you can sit in with the two-year-old on your lap, while the six-year-old practised her widths in the deeper end. There is a private beach too, though we found ourselves drifting back to the gardens most afternoons.

The days, with a six and a two year old

A holiday with children of different ages lives and dies by the small things, and this is where the week quietly won us over. There is a club for the very small, the Tiny Explorers room for under-threes, where you stay alongside them, and a Little Explorers club for the older ones, all crafts and cooking and Cretan myths. Our eldest went happily; the little one we kept close. Knowing an hour was ours if we wanted it changed the whole feel of the trip.

Mostly the rhythm set itself. A slow breakfast, the shallow end of the pool, a long nap for the youngest in the cool of the room, the beach as the heat softened. Nobody minded an early supper. Nobody minded a pram parked in the shade.

Cretan Soul, with my eldest

The afternoon she still talks about was the cooking. We did a Cretan Soul class together, my six-year-old up to her elbows in flour, making bread the proper way and learning a dish or two alongside the chef. There is something about cooking somewhere that changes how a child remembers a place; she came home able to tell people she had baked bread in Crete, which is a sentence I will take.

What we ate, and the short walk

The food was a proper part of it. Dinners over open fire at the Cretan restaurant, lighter plates another night, and a beachside Italian for the evening we could not face anything ambitious. Much of it comes from the hotel’s own gardens, and you can taste it.

When we did stir, the Minoan palace at Malia is barely two kilometres away, a 3,500-year-old ruin you can wander in under an hour, which is about the attention span we were working with. But honestly, we did not stray far. The point of the week was not to see Crete. It was to be somewhere beautiful and let the four of us simply enjoy each other, and on that, it delivered completely.

We came home rested, which is not a sentence I expected to write about a family holiday with a two-year-old.

Resorts change their offering season to season, so do confirm kids’ club ages, pool layout and room types when you book.

Written by the Bubba & Me team · Back to Escape