Agia Pelagia is west of Heraklion, down a long hill to a sheltered bay. We bring the car to your hotel there rather than making you climb back out to collect it.
€35, once for the delivery and once for the collection if you want both here. It is further than the eastern resorts and the road in is a descent and a climb, which is what the fee covers.
The road is steep and winding but properly surfaced and short. Every car we rent handles it without complaint, and the automatics make it easier if you would rather not think about it.
More than in the eastern resorts, yes. Agia Pelagia is a bay with hotels, not a town with a bus station: the beaches west towards Bali and Fodele, and Heraklion itself, are all a drive.
Yes, at no extra cost. The airport is about half an hour east along the coast road.
Cars start at €35 a day with insurance and unlimited kilometres included (full cover with zero excess from age 27), plus €35 to bring it to you in Agia Pelagia. Child seats and a second driver are free. The booking form shows the whole total before you type anything.
Neither. We take no deposit and we do not need a credit card — you pay when we hand you the keys in Agia Pelagia, in cash or by card. It is the main reason people book with us instead of at an airport desk.
You are on the right side of Heraklion for the west. Fodele, where El Greco was born, is twenty minutes; Bali and its coves about forty; Rethymno and its old Venetian harbour an hour. Going east you pass Heraklion for Knossos in half an hour.
Agia Pelagia sits west of Heraklion, roughly half an hour from the airport, in a bay reached by a single road down from the national road. West of the turning, Fodele and Bali are twenty and forty minutes away; Rethymno is an hour.
The village beach sits in a sheltered bay with calm, shallow water, which is why families choose it. Round the headland are smaller coves — Psaromoura, Mononaftis and Kladissos — and Ligaria beach is about ten minutes east. The one road into the bay leaves the national road and winds down the hillside; it is steep but surfaced, and it is the same road out. By the main beach, parking fills up in July and August, so if your hotel has spaces of its own, use them and walk down.