Greece 3-Week Itinerary Report
 

Hi all,
My husband and I just got back from a 3-week first time to Greece trip last week, so I wanted to give a quick report on our itinerary and how things worked out. We flew from DFW with a layover at JFK and onwards to Athens. We travelled in September 2013.

Sept 8: Arrive in Athens and stayed the night at Plaka Hotel, great location, good view of Acropolis from hotel rooftop.

Sept 9: Rent a car from Avis and drove to Delphi, about a 2 1/2 hour drive, easy drive. We stayed one night at Pitho Rooms, awesome owner, super friendly. Found a guide at the archeaological site, no advance reservation needed, private tour for 2, 60 euros.

Sept 10: Drove from Delphi to Meteora, again easy drive, about 4-4 1/2 hours. Able to see one Monastery the day we arrived, and a few others the next morning. Stayed one night at Pyrgos Adrachti, wonderful place, again friendly and helpful owner, great view. The road to get to the place is a bit small and steep, but manageable.

Sept 11: Drove to Igoumenitsa to catch ferry to Corfu. Some hairpin turns up and down mountains, but roads opened up and the National Road with toll and tunnels was great, new, modern, and not busy. We got to Igoumenitsa, turned in the car, and caught the ferry with 2 minutes to spare. I knew the ferries were fairly frequent, so we didn't try to get there by a certain time, but was just lucky and caught one as it was about to leave. Ferry ride was 90 minutes.

The road signs are in Greek first, then followed by a second sign in English 10 meters or so down the road. It would be helpful to recognize your destination in Greek so that you have extra time to make your turn/exit.

Sept 12-13: Corfu. Stayed at Bella Venezia. Great location, but the A/C was a bit weak for the heat and humidity during the day. Cute town, lots of shops, adorable small streets with cafes, restaurants.

Sept 14: Flew from Corfu to Mykonos on Olympic Air with a layover in Athens.

Sept 14-16: Mykonos. Stayed at Cavo Tagoo. Very nice, Cyclades style with a Vegas touch (and Vegas prices). We would stay there again. They had a shuttle that takes you to town and will pick you up from there as well. The wait was not long, but not sure how high season would be.

Sept 16-20: Took ferry from Mykonos to Santorini, almost 3 hours. We stayed in Oia at Atrina Traditional Houses in the Xenonas House. Very well decorated cave house with all the conveniences and lots of storage. Friendly staff, everyone from the owner, housekeeping, bell, etc. Everyone was friendly and welcoming. We took a wine tour with Santorini Wine Tours and a photo tour with Olaf of Santorini Photo Tours. Highly recommend both.

Sept 20: Ferry to Heraklion, about 2 1/2 hours. Stayed for a night at Lato Boutique Hotel. Easy walking distance from port with luggage. Their hotel rooftop restaurant, Herb Garden, was also divine.

Sept 21: Rental car delivered at hotel and drove to Knossos. This time we got a manual transmission, we both learned to drive a manual 20 years ago. It is like riding a bike and you never forget, but not quite.

Knossos was a quick 15 minute drive from the hotel and we got a guide at the front for a private tour. Definitely recommend a private or small group tour. The guides try to maneuver you to be in the shade (which is scarce), and much easier to find a shade for a small group than a very large one. We wrapped up our tour around noon, and drove to Elafonissi.

The drive from Heraklion to Elafonissi would be about 4-4 1/2 hours if we did not stop for lunch, but we stopped at a beach along the way for lunch. This drive was more difficult especially with the manual. There was a section of road that was closed and you were detoured along a route that was very narrow with plenty of snaky turns and oncoming cars. At times, we weren't sure if we were going the right way, but the people in oncoming cars were all in beachwear and shirtless, so that was comforting. We just followed the signs to Elafonissi and made it. We stayed at Glykeria Rooms, very basic, but did the job. The taverna they owned served homemade Crete comfort food.

Sept 22-24: Drove to Chania, about 2 hours. We stayed at Alcanea Boutique Hotel, again highly recommend. We stayed in their smallest room (least expensive) and it was still very nice. We took a private walking tour with Dr. Alexandra Ariotti, an archeaologist. She was superb, knowledgable, engaging, an entertaining tour. We took an overnight ferry to Athens, leaving Chania at 21:00 and arriving in Athens at 06:00.

Sept 25: Back in Athens for 2 nights. We took 2 walking group tours with Athens Walking Tours: the city, Acropolis and Acropolis museum tour, and the food tour. The food tour was great, wish we did it the very first day to get our bearings and be able to go back to the places. They keep the max to 8 for the food tour. The other tour was good as well, but larger about 14 and it was just a bit long (it was a total of 5 hours). Overall, highly recommend the company. We stayed at New Hotel this time. Great modern, creative vibe.

Sept 27: Fly home :(

Sounds like a great trip; you all really moved around! Greece is one of our favorite countries and Crete has been at the top of our list for a while. Would you mind sharing the name of the rental agency that delivered your car to your hotel?

Your susscinct, info filled report is very helpful. Driving to Elafonisi did you see lots of goats on the road like we did? Can't wait to return there. Thanks for sharing.

Sixt was the car rental agency we used in Crete. We picked up at our hotel in Heraklion & dropped off in Chania at one of the parking lots, they just went and found it. Very convenient not having to drive around to find the rental store front to drop off.

HappyTrvlr,

My husband was busy keeping eyes on the road and I was navigator, so did not notice the goats driving there, but did see a lot on the property where we stayed. We even had some slow braised goat meat... We did see many homemade raki stands though!

That sounds like a great trip. We were also there in the last half of 9/13. I had forgotten about this, but we were driving out of Monemvasia heading to Pylos and we saw a car coming the oposite direction coming down a hill in the road waving for us to slow down. I thought it was a speed trap. However when we got over the hill there was 2 guys herding about 50 goats. These goats had very long twisted horn. The horns looked like the horns of a big horned sheep.

I also noticed that there seemed to be alot less police on the road than you would see in the USA. Did you find this to be the case?

What would you say would be the highlight of your trip? We would probably say Santorini, but we liked everything except Olympia which was still OK.

James_P, may I ask why you didn't like Olympia? We are heading to Greece next week and hoped to stop there.

We had already seen quite a few ruins at that point. Olympia was a kind of flat area and I probably do not have the imagination to view umlimited ruins. I also thought that the town was not that great relative to others we visited. We went to Delphi after Olympia and we liked that much better. The view from our room was great looking over the valley to the sea and the Delphi site was on the side of the mountain which made it more scenic.
As a side note, you may have been to Greece before, but we were really impressed with the new Acropolis museum in Athens. It is situated over ruins with clear glass floors. I am sure that better trip planners than us would have this on our radar. We were wandering around and all museums and sites in Athens were free on 9/28&29 when we were there and we went in and I highly recommend it.

Few archaeological sites have the spectacular setting of Delphi, so anything else would pale by comparison. Harriet, very near Kalamata is Ancient Messene, which is also well worth a visit (those were the ruins in my link on your other thread). It's a huge archaeological site, but there were only about six other visitors while I was there. I actually had to wait for people to walk by to give some of my photos a sense of scale. On the way there is a monastery open to visitors.

Seconding the recommendation for Ancient Messene in the Peloponnese. One of the most amazing archaeological sites we've seen

May, thanks for sharing.