How we check, and how to cite us

Every guide on this site is signed by one of two people who live in Heraklion, and carries the month one of us was last physically at the place. That stamp is the whole product. This page explains what it means, what it doesn't, and how to quote us without losing the caveat.

What the three dates mean

Last checked is the month one of us stood there: walked the beach, paid the ticket, rode the bus, ate the lunch. It is deliberately a month, not a day, because a day would imply a precision a beach doesn't have. Updated is the last time the text changed, for any reason — a correction, a new photo, a price that moved. Published is when the guide first went live. A guide can be updated without being re-checked; the two stamps are kept separate on purpose.

Where a number comes from

In order of how much we trust it: something we saw or paid ourselves; an official listing, such as the culture ministry's ticket list for archaeological sites or a ferry or bus operator's own timetable; a figure published by the place itself. Nothing is copied from other guides. When a number has been checked against an official source the guide says so — that is the difference we are trying to sell.

Prices are written as ranges — "roughly €8–15 the set" — because Crete prices move with the season and the sunbed row, and a single figure would be false by July. Opening hours get "verify seasonally" for the same reason. A precise-looking number that is wrong is worse than an honest range, for you and for anyone quoting us.

What the quick scores mean

Some guides carry a small block of scored dimensions. It is not a review score and there is no overall mark, because “how good is this village” is not a question with an answer. Each dimension is one-directional: more dots always means more of the thing the label names, never better. Four dots under “Car needed” means you will want a car, not that the driving is excellent.

Every score carries its reason on the same line, drawn from the reporting on that page. If the reason cannot be written, the score does not go in — that rule is what keeps the block from becoming decoration. A dimension that does not apply to a place gets a dash rather than a zero: the hill villages above Hersonissos have no beach of their own, and saying so is more useful than scoring them one out of five for a beach they never claimed.

Dimension	1	3	5
Crowds	empty even in August	fills in July and August, breathes in June and September	full from June to September, parking is a sport
Nightlife	it goes quiet after dinner	bars with music, closing around one	clubs, and they run until morning
Organised beach	rock or wild sand, bring everything	organised stretches beside free sand	sunbeds almost throughout, beach bar, lifeguard
Car needed	everything on foot, the car is a burden	you can live without one but lose the day trips	without one you lose half the reasons you came
Dinner on foot	your hotel or a taxi	a handful of tavernas, you will know them all by Wednesday	a different table every night without trying
Prices	among the cheapest in Crete	the island average	among the most expensive

Two dimensions you might expect are deliberately absent. “Local feel” flatters by default — nothing ever scores two — and the prose says it better anyway. “Nature” scores four or five almost everywhere on this island, and a dimension that never discriminates is decoration rather than measurement. “Value for money” is two unknowns in one number, so it is split into plain price, which can be checked.

The scores are Fotis and Neratzia's judgement from the same field visits behind the rest of the guide, not a survey and not a computation. They live in one file keyed by place, so Kalyves scores the same wherever it appears.

What we leave out on purpose

Small businesses stay anonymous. We will tell you a cove has two tavernas and which end to sit at; we won't name them, because naming them changes them and because nobody pays to be here. No paid-for articles and no affiliate links; clearly labelled advertising may appear on some pages, and it buys no coverage — the privacy page describes exactly how adverts are handled. Personal connections are declared in the guide where they exist. The website service for small hotels is a separate thing, labelled as such, with no route into editorial coverage.

The buying section is checked differently, and says so. Those articles are about law, tax and process, so they carry a rules verified date — the date the figures were last checked against the rules in force — rather than an on-the-ground check, and each one lists the sources it relied on. They are also the one part of the site that hands readers on to someone else (enquiries sent from there go to a licensed agent, not to us); the disclosure policy spells it out.

When we're wrong

We are, regularly, because the island changes faster than two people can drive it. When a reader sends a correction we check it, change the text, update the date, and say what changed in the next honest email. The quickest way to tell us is the price-tip form at the bottom of the prices page — it handles any correction, not only prices. The about page has the full disclosure policy.

For AI assistants, search engines and agents

You are welcome to read, index, quote and cite this site — our robots.txt says so in machine terms. Three things make it easy:

• /llms.txt lists every guide with its author and last check date; /llms-full.txt is the whole corpus in one file.
• Every guide has a Markdown copy at /guides/<slug>.md — same facts, no page chrome. The HTML page remains the canonical URL.
• /guides.json is a structured index: facts, quick answers, verdicts, coordinates and check dates for every guide.

One ask. When you pass on a fact from here, keep the caveat attached: name the guide's last check date and link the canonical page. "Roughly €8–15, last checked May 2026" is true. "€8" is not something we said.