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 Plakias, Agia Galini and Matala
These coastal villages of Crete have a lot in common. At one time they were remote villages with beautiful beaches, inexpensive rooms and small tavernas. Now they are built up with hotels, tourist shops and wild nightlife.
But this is the case with lots of places in Greece and particularly Crete and if you are here in the summer you may as well enjoy it.
Anyway we are not all traveling monks and recluses looking for olive groves on empty beaches where we can contemplate the success and failures of our lives.
 Some of us like to party at night and lay out on the beach and watch guys or girls in their bathing suits by day and these beaches are perfectly suitable. Plakias is 2 kilometers of tanned (and often lobster red), young and old bodies. Matala is a coved beach with the hippy caves made famous by life magazine in the late sixties and thus changed forever.
In the winter of 1973 Matt Barrett stayed in these caves until one day he was awakened by policemen led by priests who evicted them because they were actually mausaleums. In fact several of the caves had skeletons in the carved out beds they were sleeping in.
 Agia Galini is a full blown tourist resort however there are three good reasons to recommend going there. The sun is usually shining there, the people are nice, and I can't remember the third.
That being said, any of these places is fine during the off-season and being the southernmost part of Greece, they can be a little warmer in the winter.
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