Falassarna Beach: Your guide to paradise

Falassarna Beach, Crete

Where is Falassarna Beach Crete ?

Falassarna is on the north-west coast of Crete island.  It’s one of many Chania beaches around the west Crete province, 52 km west of the city of Chania. The closest town of any size is Kissamos (also known locally as Kastelli), 14 km away.

How To Get to Falassarna Beach

The easiest way to get to Falassarna is by car. You can reach it from Chania in around 90 minutes, from Rethymno in 2.5 hours and from Crete capital Heraklion in 4 hours.

The Chania Falassarna bus is a good option during the peak summer season. Six services a day operate during that period, taking 1 hour 40 minutes from Chania bus station. This continues along the coast road, calling at all the main Chania beaches (including Agia Marina, Kolymvari and Kissamos.

The bus runs four times a day in the shoulder seasons (May-June and September-October). If you’re visiting around mid-October, the schedule may arbitrarily be stopped for the season, even if the KTEL Crete buses website tells you otherwise. It pays to ask as many people as possible to make sure they’re still running.

Best Time To Visit Falassarna

Falassarna is open for business between May and the end of October. After this most businesses close for the winter.

It would be stunning in May and June, when you would still have spring flowers around. However, the sea wouldn’t be warm enough to swim in at this time.

It is hot – mid 30s Centigrade – in July and August, the peak season. This is by far the busiest time of year. All the restaurant and bar owners we spoke to said that it’s crowded, and accommodation is expensive but gets booked out nonetheless. The Falassarna restaurants and tavernas are usually packed out in the evenings.

Things start to quieten down in September, but it’s still hot, often into the 30s.

We visited in the October shoulder season. The temperature varied between 23-28 Centigrade, dropping to around 19 or 20 overnight. The crowds had long gone. The cafes and bars were generally quiet. 

The weather was fantastic, and we would often be sharing a whole section of beach with just one other family or couple. And Falassarna hotel prices were around half the summer peak rates.

From November until late April, Falassarna shuts down.  Very few people live there – all the locals with whom we spoke live in nearby Kissamos or Platanos over the winter months, so the vast majority of businesses are closed.  You CAN still visit the beach during the winter, but you’ll have to drive there by yourself as no buses run there for over six months.

Falassarna Weather

As mentioned, Falassarna can be hot for much of the season. It does also get its share of windy days, with gusts from the north, which can take the edge off the summer heat.

Falassarna Village

Falassarna is tiny. Most of it is spread out along the main road from Kissamos. There are two shops, one ATM, various hotels, holiday apartments and tavernas. It’s more of a strung-out hamlet than a village.

Falassarna – Beach By Beach

1. Falassarna Main Beach

The main Falassarna beach is known locally as Pachia Ammos, which means ‘coarse sand’, is also the main draw for visitors to Falassarna. It’s rightly one of the most famous beaches in Crete, and its convenient location, with free parking close by, means this is where most day trippers will head. 

It is a Blue Flag beach with the most beach bars and facilities including sun beds, beach volley courts and water sports equipment hire. There are also some luxury four-poster sun beds with shade.

It’s a stunning long beach with amazing crystal-clear water for swimming. The water at the southern end of the beach, next to the sand dunes and rocks, is calmest and best for snorkeling. This area is where you’re most likely to encounter some pink sand along the shoreline.

It’s one of just three pink beaches in Crete but the sand is not always there – I visited the same spot six or seven times over our two-week stay, and in that time it was there in abundance once, and there were traces of it another day. If you’re looking for pink sand, you’re more likely to find it at Elafonissi Beach 50 km (30 miles) to the south.

There are also plenty of tavernas and cafe bars along the main beach. We ate at Gilisma Tavern a couple of times, and also stopped by at the Bird Away beach bar a short walk away. Gilisma also has a good play area in the back garden, which Our Little Man hugely enjoyed.

2. Kalami Beach (also called Nudist Beach)

Walking the full length of Falassarna Beach is an epic journey, traversing a big beach with wide open sands, a few mini-scrambles across rocks, beachside woodland, smaller sandy beaches. tiny coves, rock pools and more.

The Kalami section of Falassarna beach is immediately to the north of Pachia Ammos beach. It’s a secluded series of tiny coves and rock pools, divided by rocky outcrops into lots of private mini-beaches. The terrain makes for plenty of privacy, and unsurprisingly it’s very popular with naturists. 

This part of the beach feels so remote, but is within a few hundred metres’ walk from the facilities on the main Falassarna beach just to the south.  

3. Karkatsouli Beach

Karkatsouli is the ‘middle’ Falassarna beach, a beautiful open west-facing beach with umbrellas, sunbeds and lifeguards. It’s accessible on foot via a path through rocks, dunes and trees, which gives you a real feeling of adventure. The easiest walk there is from the Galasia Thea restaurant, a great taverna with a brilliant host, Stelios.   

The one thing to be aware of at Karkatsouli beach is the steep drop-off just offshore, which Faye reckons to be around a metre deep. So be very careful with kids.

4. Small Beach or Petalida Beach

We had a balcony view of this gorgeous small beach from our apartment in Falasarna Bay Hotel. It’s also below Petalida Hotel after which it’s named.

If you’re looking for a quiet place in Falassarna this is it – in two weeks we hardly saw anyone stopping by there. It’s a small beach with a wide stretch of golden sand, and the main reason it’s quiet is that it’s quite rocky underfoot, so you’d need water shoes to paddle or swim there. That said, what a spot it is for a beautiful sunset.

5. North Beach or Agia Paraskevi Beach

This northernmost beach of Falassarna is named after the little church on the hill above, close to the Golden Sunset Tavern which does a different menu each day and is one of the best places to eat in Falassarna, with a fantastic sea view from the windows.

We spent more of our time here than at any of the other beaches of Falassarna because of the child-friendly rock pools at the southern end of this part of Falassarna beach. We spent a great many happy hours with Our Little Man, also regularly stopping by at the Alea beach bar and Orange Blue which are both great for food and drink.

The rocks form a natural barrier to both pools, making it a sheltered spot for kids to paddle or swim, protected from any currents. It’s a blissful spot, with some sunbeds and umbrellas close to the pools. It’s also the location of one of the best sunsets in Europe, with the sun sinking behind some islets into the Mediterranean Sea to the west. It’s called Baby Beach Falassarna on Google Maps.

There are more small hidden coves at the northern end of the beach, including one with three abandoned fishing boats 400 metres further north.

Ancient Falassarna

Falassarna was an ancient settlement and powerful port city state, originally founded by the Dorians during the 7^th century BC. Its enclosed harbour was developed with fortifications and by the 4^th century BC Falassarna was an important regional naval power.

Its heyday lasted until the 1^st century BC, when the Romans ransacked and destroyed it. An earthquake later destroyed and buried what remained of the city and its harbour.

Excavations only started in the 1960s, and much of the site is yet to be uncovered. Some foundations of the city’s ancient buildings are visible – you can see the ruins of ancient Falasarna from outside the site fence. The site is meant to be open 10 am to 4 pm every day except Monday during the tourist season – it wasn’t on the Thursday I visited!

It’s a short (1 km) drive from the village and bus terminus through olive groves. It’s around 200 metres from there to the beginning of the Falassarna to Balos hike (9 km / 6 miles).

Excursions From Falassarna

The other local trip is the Falassarna cruise to Balos beach. It’s 35 euros per adult, and runs, weather permitting, from the small port between June and mid October. The boat sometimes stops at Gramvousa Island as well. Otherwise you can arrange local transfers to the main port of Kissamos, and catch the ferry to Balos lagoon and beach from there. Check out our article on How To Get To Balos Beach for further information. 

If you’re driving, you can get around much more than the local public transport allows you. The surrounding area to the south of Falassarna has several small beaches and coves, including a tiny beach that we were told occasionally has pink sand and Sfinari Beach, the most developed beach in miles (it has a restaurant!).

It’s a 50 km drive south from Falassarna to Elafonissi Beach, for many people one of the best beaches in Crete. This is the famous pink sand beach in Crete, its shoreline often fringed by a line of pink sand, the remains of millions of pink shells. It’s a beautiful sight, making a wonderful contrast with the clear turquoise waters. Bear in mind that there are several beaches at Elafonissi – the main beach, a shallow lagoon beach, and several more isolated pink sandy beaches and coves along the coast of neighbouring Elafonissi Island, onto which you can just walk.

Elafonissi beach is remote, like Falassarna, but is reachable because most travel agencies book tours there – allowing you several hours on the beach.  These run from Chania town, Rethymno – even Heraklion – and have pick-up points at most resorts along the north Crete coast.  

If you have your own transport, I also recommend paying a visit to Kedrodasos Beach, a half-hour coastal hike from Elafonissi beach (otherwise it also has its own car park). It’s an untouched corner of paradise, a series of consecutive beaches and coves set in a grove of juniper trees. It’s one of the most beautiful beaches of Chania province and, indeed, the whole island.

Falassarna Hotels

We stayed at the largest Falassarna hotel complex, Falassarna Bay. This is a complex of studios and larger apartments, all with jaw-dropping beach and sea views. Check out our Falassarna Bay Hotel review here.

The Falassarna Beach Hotel also shares the same building, and has a similar set-up. They also have the marvellous Taverna Falassarna in-house.

There are a wide range of smaller places to stay, mainly apartments, along the road through Falassarna. Of these, the Diamond Star Hotel and Pachia Ammos Falasarna get the most favourable reviews.

Falassarna Beach Final Words

Falassarna Beach is our favourite beach in Greece, we loved it even more than the famous Balos and Elafonissi beaches. It’s the wilder side of paradise, an extraordinary place and one we will return to again and again.

Check out more of our articles on Crete here: