Story time: How Crete captured my heart and never let go

When an island calls, you answer

The question I get asked most often is, "Why Crete?"

It's a question that makes me smile, because the real answer isn't simple. It's not about beaches or sunshine or ancient ruins, though Crete has all of those. It's about something deeper, the way certain places speak to parts of us we didn't know were listening.

For me, Crete was that place. And twenty years later, I'm still discovering why.

The island of beautiful contrasts

Crete is a place of dualities, and somehow they all make perfect sense together.

The wild blue
There's the untamed vastness of the Cretan and Libyan seas, where water is so blue it almost hurts to look at. When I'm swimming in this sea, I feel more than myself. I feel connected to something ancient and infinite, to the spirits of sailors and fishermen and rebels who lived by this water and understood its moods.

The sea here demands respect. It's not always gentle. But it's always honest. And there's a kind of freedom in that honesty, the freedom to be exactly who you are, held by something bigger than yourself.

The grounded heart
Then there's the other Crete, the serene, grounded heart of the island. The wild mountains that sheltered rebels and keep the secrets of Cretan bravery through times of war. The olive groves that seem to breathe with you. The villages where time moves at a different pace, where people still know how to be without constantly doing.

After a day exploring Crete's wild corners, there's nothing like returning to a place where you can rest. That's what my village, Alagni, gives me. Pure mountain air. Food that actually nourishes your soul. The gentle rhythm of life that lets both body and spirit recover.

Here, the nearby mountains and wild herbs wrap around you like an embrace, reminding you that this is a place where you don't have to prove anything. You can just exist.

The first time I saw this island

I came to Crete as a young tourism student doing a hotel internship. I was uncertain, far from home, trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged.

One day, a friend and I decided to hitchhike to Spinalonga. No plan, just curiosity. I remember standing on that small island, looking out at the endless blue, and feeling something I couldn't name. It wasn't logical. It wasn't even clear.

But I felt it: this place mattered.

I didn't know then that I'd spend the next two decades unraveling what that feeling meant. That I'd eventually work as a guide at Spinalonga, telling visitors the island's story. That I'd learn Greek, build a life here, restore a cottage in a cozy village, become a citizen.

All I knew in that moment was that Crete had touched something deep inside me.

An invitation from my heart to yours

My affair with Crete is a love story that continues to unfold.

Come and see what Crete reflects back to you, in its people, its food, its wind-worn trails, its impossibly blue water, its mountain villages where life still moves at human pace.
Let it meet you, not as a destination, but as a doorway. A doorway to something you've been looking for, even if you don't yet know what it is.

And if you want to see this island the way I see it, through the eyes of someone who earned her place here, I'll be waiting in Alagni with stories to share and a warm welcome.

Want to read more about my journey? Check out how I learned Greek, the language that helped me truly belong here.

Tonia ❤️

What truly captured my heart: the people

If you ask me what makes Crete special, I won't talk about the beaches first. I'll talk about the people.

There's a kind of hospitality here that goes beyond politeness or tourism. It's genuine, warm, almost fierce in its generosity. Neighbors greet you every morning with "kalimera." Strangers invite you into their homes. Friendships are built over glasses of raki and simple meals that somehow taste like an inner hug.

People here are expressive, unafraid to feel deeply and say what they think. Conversations are alive with emotion—hands gesturing, voices rising and falling, laughter mixing with heated debate. There's no pretense of politeness that masks what's real. And somehow, being around this honesty makes you feel permission to accept your own feelings too. You stop apologizing for caring too much, feeling too deeply, being too intense.

I'm inspired by the strength of Cretan women and the deep respect they command in society. You can feel it everywhere, in the way families revolve around them. It's real respect, rooted in ancient Minoan culture where women held power and equality, carried through centuries of resilience, alive today in every grandmother's quiet authority.

I'm moved by the elders who sit in kafenions, keepers of stories that stretch back generations. In Cretan villages, stories are currency. History lives in every conversation. Memory is sacred. And if you're lucky enough to be welcomed in, you become part of the living story too.

This isn't tourist Crete. This is the Crete that has held me for twenty years.

Learning to live like a Cretan

Belonging here didn't happen automatically. I had to show up for it.

I went to village festivals alone, not knowing anyone. I learned to make traditional cookies and olive oil soap with local women who spoke no English. I sat in coffee shops, observing, listening, trying to understand not just the words but the way of being here.

I learned that Cretan hospitality isn't passive, it's active participation. You show up. You help with the olive harvest. You attend the panigiri. You learn the dances. You remember people's names and their stories.

Slowly, the village stopped seeing me as "the foreigner" and started seeing me as Tonia. Yiayia Anna started bringing me food. Neighbors invited me to family celebrations. People began asking my opinion, including me in decisions, trusting me with their stories.

That's when I knew I'd earned my place here.

(If you want to read about my journey learning Greek, the language that helped me truly belong—I wrote about that here.)

What Crete taught me about home

I've spent almost twenty years on this island, and I'm still discovering new beaches, new mountain trails, new tavernas, new stories. That's the magic of Crete, it's vast enough to feel like a country, intimate enough to feel like home.

But here's what I've learned: home isn't where you're born. Home is where your heart finally stops searching.

For years, my heart was restless, moving from Poland to England to Crete, always looking for the next thing, the better place, the answer to questions I couldn't articulate.

Crete taught me to stop searching and start living. To put down roots. To invest in relationships that take years to build. To understand that belonging is something you create, not something you find.

The real magic: what you discover inside

Here's what I believe about travel now, after two decades of living it:

✨The most compelling journey isn't the one across the map. It's the one you take within yourself.

Crete has a way of inviting that inward journey. There's something in the energy here, rising from the earth, carried on the wind, held in the stones of ancient monasteries and Minoan ruins, that asks you to pay attention. To listen. To feel.

Paulo Coelho wrote something that has stayed with me since I first read The Alchemist and Warrior of the Light—words that kept returning to me as I built my life here: "You cannot escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say."

That's what Crete taught me. And it's what I hope it offers you.

This cottage isn't just a place to stay. It's a place for that kind of travel. A place where you can slow down enough to hear your own thoughts. Where you can sit with a cup of coffee and watch the light change on the mountains and realize you haven't checked your phone in hours. A place where, maybe, you finally stop running and start listening to what your heart has been trying to tell you all along.

Loving with open eyes

Twenty years here has taught me something important: you can love a place deeply and see its struggles clearly. Real love demands that honesty.

Greece ranks first in the Global Business Complexity Index 2025: the most complex country in the world for doing business. Living here, you feel it in the talented young people who leave, in the bureaucratic maze that exhausts entrepreneurs, in an economy still finding its footing.

Crete has everything it needs to thrive independently. The soil is so rich that if borders closed tomorrow, Cretans would still eat well—olive oil, vegetables, cheese, wine, all produced right here. But with almost no factories or manufacturing, tourism has become the lifeline, making the island's prosperity vulnerable to forces beyond its control.

I see the contradiction daily: an island that could be a model of sustainable, self-reliant living, held back by systems that make it nearly impossible to build, innovate, create. And yet, the people who stay and build despite the obstacles—they're the real heroes.

I tell you this not to discourage you from coming, but because honesty is part of hospitality too. When you visit Crete, you're not just seeing paradise, you're witnessing a place in transition, caught between incredible potential and the weight of systems that no longer serve it.

I'll be writing more about this complexity in a future post, because I believe understanding both the beauty and the struggle is part of truly knowing this island.