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The market building is a Chania landmark and bustles with vendors and shoppers. A visual feast and also the place to buy herbs, olive oil, dried fruit, honey and typical Cretan souvenirs, such as the tiny metal pots used to brew Greek coffee.

Running through the centre of the old quarter, this has been a street of saddlemakers and cobblers for centuries, perhaps even millennia. These days, satchels, sandals and handbags abound.

The best wines in Crete (and from other parts of Greece) can be tasted and bought in this new visitor centre at Crete’s top winery on the Fantaxommetocho vineyard (see Boutari Winery and Audio-Visual Show).

Irakleio’s main market street and a great place to shop for Cretan herbs and tisanes. It also offers an insight into the Cretan diet – along with the olives, you will see buckets of live snails for sale.

Named after the legendary inventor of the Labyrinth (see The Minotaur and the Labyrinth), this road is rather more upmarket than Odos 1866, and is lined with shops selling jewellery and linen and cotton clothes to summer visitors.

For quality replicas of finds from the archaeological sites of Crete, visit the Museum Shops, in the former Venetian Loggia on Odos Paleologou in Rethymno and in the Byzantine Museum in Chania.

Promoting the produce of local farmers, this co-operative venture is well worth visiting just to see how the vines and olives of Crete are grown and processed. It is also a good place to pick up quality olive oil, very drinkable wines and raki, Crete’s favourite spirit.

Rethymno’s up-market shopping street, lined with stores selling copies of Minoan pottery, traditional Cretan pottery and modern ceramics, as well as colourful cotton and linen, lace and embroidery.

The most photogenic market in Crete spills out – as indeed it has for centuries – from openfronted shops and stalls along Odos Ethnikis Andistasi and around the Venetian Porta Guora. Go early in the morning, when it is in full cry and waiters bustle from stall to stall with coffee and raki.

An open-air street market takes place every Thursday along Odos Dimitrakaki, beside Rethymno’s public gardens. It starts early in the morning and winds down by midday. It is a rather patchy affair, but can sometimes be fascinating.