Postcard from Chania

TRAVEL GUIDE | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA

Just outside this former outpost of the Venetian empire, Kate Lough makes herself at home among the creative scene of Crete’s Chania. Along the way she discovers a more intimate Crete, where generous hosts, fertile landscapes, creative characters and wild southern beaches reveal the enduring spirit of the island.

BY KATE LOUGH | CABANA TRAVEL | 9 OCTOBER 2026

© Niall Dennehy 

On the last day of May, Metohi Kindelis carries a wanton sense of abundance. An electric Jacaranda in full bloom guards monumental, arched wooden doors, which push open into a cloud of bougainvillea. And announce a cobbled courtyard with sun-bleached terracotta walls, towering cactus trees and an imposing Venetian farmhouse that has lived in the same colour for more than 400 years.

A small hotel nested within a working organic farm in the outskirts of Chania, I’m greeted with a hug by Danai Kindelis. After years working in international relations — and a stint in fashion — in Luxembourg, Paris and Madrid, Danai returned to the family farm and took over the reins from her Uncle Manolis in 2019.

“Kindelis has been in our family for more than a century and is still our family home,” she tells me as she unlocks the door to Kyriakos, the old olive press and my own slice of the farmhouse for the next week. “It would have been the summer house for a Venetian family living in Chania,” Danai adds, as I marvel at the thickness of the stone walls that keep it cool.

As we walk around the farm, trailed by her three rescue dogs, I get to know Metohi through its literal roots. Avocados are bulging on the trees, ripening happily thanks to the area’s microclimate; tart kumquats wait to be picked; and the sharp citrus of softly landed bergamot fruits scents the early evening air. Climbing the pink steps lining the walled garden of Kyriakos, Metohi’s geography comes into focus.

To the south, the landscape is ringed by the White Mountains, whose limestone peaks have just lost their dusting of snow in the last weeks; to the north, the sprawl of elegant Chania, giving way to the sea beyond its historic harbour. Surrounding the farmhouse walls are hectares of fruit orchards, olive groves and vegetable patches.

These days, the family land is crossed by a highway and although you can hear it, the hum quickly fades away against a soundtrack of birdsong and cicadas. “It has always been a very fertile place,” Danai says, as she explains the participatory model of metohi estates, in which workers were paid in “roof, produce and money”. And although not participating myself, a sense of connectedness to the family land and its produce is quick to take hold.

Inside, I find my fridge loaded with the farm’s bounty: a drawer packed with shapely oranges to squeeze into morning juices; fantastic apricot and strawberry jams made by Uncle Manolis, alongside eggs, soft Cretan mizithra, aged graviera and carob rusks from beyond the boundary. One afternoon, I find tuba-esque courgettes, a tomato that could be eaten like an apple and vlyta outside my front door. The gesture is pure generosity, pure Danai, pure Metohi.

Sitting at the old joiner’s table outside Kyriakos, Athens fades away. A good hotel can make you question the way you travel, but Metohi makes me question the way I want to live. I sit for hours looking at the garden: a riotous, lushness of lavender, roses and fresh mint. I pick the latter for a watermelon salad. I don’t wear shoes or close doors. I start my day with a naked swim. I take my time to read and write. Imagining all the lives lived in this storied farm. Cities start to seem absurd.

© Aleks Magnusson

In Chania, a quick 10-minute drive from Metohi, a cast of characters is reinvigorating its creative and hospitality scenes. Twisting through the narrow streets of the Old Town, which traces back to Minoan times, is almost too picturesque — its layered story told through colorful Venetian mansions and arsenals, Byzantine churches and Ottoman minarets — with the tourists to prove it. Continuing east around the harborfront, beyond the Egyptian lighthouse, is Koum Kapi — a locals’ neighbourhood with a sandy beach beneath the promenade.

Near to the far end is Maiami, a white Art Deco-style building with salmon pink doors and windows and teal umbrellas strung with tangerine bulbs. Once a 1950s taverna of the same name, it is now the vibrant studio-come-brasserie of Alexandra Manousakis, a creative polymath known for her playful, colourful ceramics. After growing up in the States, a 23-year-old Alexandra moved to Chania in 2007 to take over her father’s winery just outside the city. Later bringing her new husband, Afshin Molavi, a Swedish-Iranian sommelier, to join her.

It is Afshin that welcomes us. Settling us in for an aperitivo in front of a sky making its way from fire to lavender, with a bottle of his own-made Sparkling Xinomavro and a pile of hot patates. Over dinner with the pair, a unique style of relaxed, tattooed passion pours off him as he points out the watermelon rind in our horta and insists we try one of the fried olives stuffed with anthotiro cheese. As Alexandra shows us the interior of the restaurant with its disco ball and emerald-green fireplace, I can easily imagine the winter evenings she tells me they host.

Up in the hills, nearby, is the Manousakis Winery, which the duo have breathed new life into. Sitting like old friends, we make our way through Vidianos, Assytikos and Romeikos, all decorated with Alexandra’s expressive, colourful new labels. This time, fed with more traditional dishes such as lamb braised in olive oil and pastitsio. Ending with a nightcap in the family’s original saloni. Alexandra sharing stories from her family’s riveting, complex history with her signature wit and generosity.

Day by day, the cast of characters expands. I visit old friends of my parents in their apartment hanging over the curve of Chania’s old harbour. It looks across to the Maritime Museum where my great-grandfather is noted for his role in the 1941 Battle of Crete. A short walk away is Red Jane, a contemporary bakery converted from a 1930s foundry by London-based designer Michael Anastassiades.

It is the brainchild of Nikos Tsepetis, the mischievous Cretan-born owner of Chania’s design hotel, Ammos, who has also opened a bottle-shop-come-wine-bar next door. As Danai and I sit for a glass of Pet Nat, produced outside Heraklion, we bump into olive oil producer Antonis Annitsakis, whose nomadic cooking-over-fire venture will launch within days. More connections, old and new, begin to bind me to Chania.

But it is when Danai takes me to the southern coast of the region that I fall in love. “People associate Crete with the beach, but I find the rural part very beautiful. Here, you can get a more real sense of this island and its people,” she tells me as we curve up and along mountain passes, snaking through old villages and past gorges into the Skafia region. The surrounding nature is at its most rampant. Finally we meet the Libyan Sea, where pebbled beaches slip into the most beautiful waters I have seen in Greece — and, therefore, anywhere.

On the drive home, salted and sunned, we stop in Danai’s most loved kafenio, Nectarios in Askifou. We are too late for food. But still, he prepares a table with raki, thick triangles of his own graviera, a perfect salad of tomatoes and artichokes. As a full moon rises on the first night the village feels warm enough to eat outside, we chew the fat with Nectarios. Life feels very connected. Very abundant. Just like Crete.

© Nafsika G