Lindas Convent Garden Homes is a small, family-run business in the old town of Chania. Our mother Linde bought a house in this neighbourhood in 1992 — the corner house of a former Venetian monastery, once the abbot's home. Over the decades it became the summer house of our Greek-German family, and step by step we restored the neighbouring apartments in the same spirit: the original style, the original materials, and the way of living outdoors that these houses were built for. Michalis manages the rental from Germany, where he lives with his wife and three sons, and is in Chania regularly. Our team on the ground welcomes every guest in person, looks after the houses and is a message away throughout your stay. Whatever you need — a rental car, a taverna worth walking to, how to get to the gorge — just ask. We would rather you asked us than looked it up.

Part of a 500-year-old Venetian monastery in the heart of Splantzia — and still quiet enough to hear the birds in the courtyard at breakfast. Wide double doors lead from the courtyard straight into the kitchen and living room, the big bright space where you'll cook, eat and settle in. With the doors open, courtyard and living room become one, and that is exactly how this house was meant to work. Behind it lie the two bedrooms, each with a 1.60 m double bed and air conditioning. One of them has a large stone arch, a typical Old Town feature we deliberately brought back to light. There is one bathroom with a level-access shower. 75 sqm in all. In front of the house lies the large courtyard of the old convent garden, under citrus trees and bougainvillea. It is enclosed, with a gate onto the lane, so children can play outside without anyone having to follow them around. Behind the house is a second yard, on ground level and yours alone: an outdoor shower, a wide bench for sitting or lying down, shade in the afternoon. Access is completely step-free from the lane through to the living area, without a single threshold, and the entrance door is 82 cm wide. For guests with a walking frame or limited mobility, and for anyone travelling with a pushchair, the apartment works very well. For wheelchair users it is only partly suitable, and we would rather say so upfront: the bedroom and bathroom doors are 70 cm wide and the shower access measures 50 cm. Winter in Chania feels like spring in central Europe. The apartment is heated, the town belongs to the locals again, and we offer good monthly rates for longer stays. A mid-stay clean with fresh linen is available on request at any time. From the third week of your stay, we clean weekly. The finest room in this house is outdoors. You'll notice on the first morning.

Splantzia sits directly behind the old harbour: narrow Venetian lanes, deep houses, courtyards everywhere. It is one of the last quarters of the Old Town where people actually still live — in the morning you hear neighbours, not wheelie cases. The heart of it is Plateia 1821, which everyone simply calls "Splantzia". Cafés, old tavernas, and the church of Agios Nikolaos, carrying a Venetian bell tower and an Ottoman minaret side by side — the only church in Greece where that is the case. Sit down under the plane tree and take it in. Two minutes through the lanes brings you to the Koum Kapi waterfront. Evenings are lively here, restaurants and bars until late. Mornings are a different place altogether: the water is clear and shallow, the beach is supervised, and half the neighbourhood comes down to swim — pensioners, children, people on their way to work. Go once at eight in the morning and you'll see why we keep mentioning it. On Saturdays there is a farmers' market on Minoos Street, just around the corner. Everything the Cretan soil gives. Anyone who has eaten a tomato from here knows what we mean. And then simply wander. You will get lost in Splantzia — but after a few minutes you're back at the water anyway.