Marriott Domes Zeen Chania is a fantastic family hotel on Crete in Greece

As long as you can find the entrance, the Domes Zeen Chania on Crete in Greece is a fabulous place to stay. I think everyone we saw there was with a family, we even spotted a family wearing a Seattle shirt (and to my family’s horror, I asked, and they were not from Seattle, a relative had bought them the shirt.) And even though we accidentally booked our Greece trip during Greek Orthodox Easter when many things were closed, this resort was open for meals and had lovely treats in our room for us too.

We booked a room rate that was a half-board rate and it included breakfast every day as well as lunch or dinner and we also had access to a lounge with our Platinum Marriott Card. We stayed two nights at this wonderful hotel and I wish we were there longer and I want to come back at least a month later next time too for warmer weather even though it was really nice to have Crete almost all to ourselves in April. And don’t let me forget to tell you about the breakfast….

We booked a room with its own pool

We stayed in a family bungalow type room that had a pool and while we had two grownups and two big teenagers all in one room, it was pretty spacious with a king bed, a rollaway bed and a pullout couch. We were a little tired after our boat trip to Crete from Santorini (we took a taxi from the ferry to the airport to pick up our rental car) and then we drove a few hours from the airport to the hotel and it got dark. I’d read somewhere that the hotel entrance was difficult to find so I thought I better reiterate this here. As usual things might change so double check but we just followed the google map directions past a gas station and a little gravel road through what felt like a little farm and almost thought maybe we weren’t in the right place because this seemed like a fairly big resort, but then suddenly there we were at the entrance to Domes Zeen Chania. There were no upgrades available because the hotel was busy for the Easter holiday but we had a lovely room so we were pretty content. We also were able to go straight to dinner and that was included in our booking.

And the meals at the Marriott Domes Zeen Chania were fantastic

Actually all of our meals on Crete were pretty perfect. We could not keep up with all the eating on Crete. And at this hotel we really enjoyed that each of our meals that were included with our room came with an appetizer, entree and dessert. There was so much food! We ended up eating dinner here both nights of our stay.

But breakfast especially was spectacular and maybe one of the best breakfasts of my life (and the second best was probably at the Pantelia Suites on Santorini). We sat outside by the pool where we could still see the ocean. The breakfast buffet took up over three giant tables on the inside of the restaurant. There was one completely full of bread, then one with fruit and yogurt, and then hot food. We tried so many interesting Greek foods that we might not have tried on their own because they were all part of the buffet and we could have little bites.

I included a picture of the lounge:

And you can walk to Chania from the hotel

It’s about 30 minutes to walk from the hotel to Chania and it’s such a gorgeous walk. I think some of my favorite photos of our whole Greece trip came from a walk we took back from Chania to our hotel at sunset. Chania is a beautiful port city and I think we could have spent more time there.

We also took a day trip to see one of two pink sand beaches my guys read about that we needed to see on Chania. We went through many tunnels and past beautiful scenery to get to Elafonissi Beach and because we were there in the very low season I don’t think it was as tough of a journey to get there than it could be at other times of the year. Apparently the pink sand can be different each time you visit and we were lucky that it was pretty pink when we were there. Even though it was a bit too chilly to swim at Elafonissi Beach in April we spent a bit of time here and I’m really glad we went.

On our way we saw many honey stands and many of them were still closed for the season. But then we passed one where a family having a picnic in front waved us over while we slowly drove by. It turns out the family having the picnic owned the Stathakis honey store. We ended up with a fabulous private tour and ate some really tasty food too. I’m so glad that we stopped. We also had lunch at a delicious restaurant that had an outdoor area with beautiful orange trees.

After our stay we drove from the Domes Zeen Chania to Rethymno and stayed in Heraklion (my son found a really great deal at the Heraklion City Lion hotel and insisted we stay there so we did and it turned out to be a lovely stay before an early flight from the airport back to Athens too.) Rethymno was such a beautiful town but we only had a short stop because we wanted to spend time at Knossos in Heraklion too. (We did not splurge on a guided tour, we just went in and wandered around.)

The three nights we spent on Crete were part of a 10 day itinerary in Greece as a family of two adults and two teenagers. I have a video of the pink sand beach here and a few photo carousels of our Greece trip on my Instagram. Feel free to message if you are curious about any of the details and I’ll do my best to help.

(PS. if you are looking for places to stay with teenagers in Athens, we really enjoyed our stay at the Athenian Residences because of its spaciousness and proximatey to restaurants and attractions.)

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)