Greece trip!

[yogiii]

You can do day trips from Crete to other islands, I really like that but it's a personal thing.  Eat lots of nutella filled crepes and drink lots of frappes.  That's my professional advice!

ETA - I've never done anything in Greece that I'd advise against other than I think 2-3 days in Athens is enough for a lifetime

[cael]

LOL our plan is 3 days in Athens I think, so we can see all the big historical spots, then off to everywhere else! I've been told by many people to not stay in Athens much longer than that. We'll have a night or two to stay in Athens on the way to/from other places but we aren't spending tons of time there. We'll be taking the (overnight) ferry to Crete from Athens, staying there for a long weekend, then ferry to Santorini for 2 nights, then ferry back to Athens, one night's layover, then renting the car and driving north. We're staying with family members on Crete so they will take us around, but day trips to other islands sounds great. We'll see what they want to show us!

SIL's pretty excited about this trip because the last time she went their dad took her, and since he was from there he had no desire to stop and see touristy things and whatnot. So she's excited she can see some more stuff this time around! I really want to go to Delphi, we're going to try to plug that into the road trip part since it isn't too far off the route we'll be driving to Volos.

[yogiii]

Delphi is worth the small detour for sure.  When are you going, spring or summer? 

[cael]

June! We were going to do September but June worked better for SIL... no complaints here!

[yogiii]

So this seems to have a lot of complaints on tripadvisor, but it was one of my favorite things, climbing Mt. Lycabettus.  There is a funicular tram but we didn't bother with that.  We enjoyed walking up and just seeing the view from the top (we actually went up both days we were there).  Yes there isn't really much to do but the view is nice, and at least when I went it wasn't very crowded.

[cael]

Is that where there's a restaurant at the top you can take the tram up to? SIL said she went last time when they were there and wanted to take us, but she couldn't remember the name or where it was. I'd love to hike/walk it and I bet DH and SIL would be up for that. I'll check it out and see if this is the place, thanks yogiii!

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

I think 3 days in Athens is entirely too long.  I didn't particularly care for that city, I came in the evening before from Chios, the next day saw everything I wanted to see in Athens (even though I did have a really good dinner in a place that was waaaay off the beaten track) and the following morning was at the harbor in Pireaus getting on a ferry to Paros.

I left Paros the night before my flight, stayed overnight in Athens again and cabbed it to the airport.

[cael]

I'd have to look at our itinerary, but I think we're arriving in Athens Tuesday afternoon then getting on a ferry Thursday night to go to Crete? Could be Friday night. So some of Tuesday, all day Wednesday, then Thursday until probably 4-5, we plan to get the overnight ferry to Crete. Either way, that should give us enough time to see everything we want to see, then our other separate nights there are just to sleep and get going somewhere else the next day.

I used to work with a Greek/Albanian kid who lived in Athens until he was 11 or 12. He always said the tourist sites are ok, but told me overall Athens was dirty, covered in graffiti, and a shithole (I think that's the exact word he used, lol) 

Oh, The Walk of the Penguin Mich, would you recommend getting the ferry tickets in advance? SIL says last time she was there they just bought them at the port, how did you do it? (I trust SIL but I get paranoid )

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Jan 26, 2015 8:54:31 GMT -5 cael said:

I'd have to look at our itinerary, but I think we're arriving in Athens Tuesday afternoon then getting on a ferry Thursday night to go to Crete? Could be Friday night. So some of Tuesday, all day Wednesday, then Thursday until probably 4-5, we plan to get the overnight ferry to Crete. Either way, that should give us enough time to see everything we want to see, then our other separate nights there are just to sleep and get going somewhere else the next day.

I used to work with a Greek/Albanian kid who lived in Athens until he was 11 or 12. He always said the tourist sites are ok, but told me overall Athens was dirty, covered in graffiti, and a shithole (I think that's the exact word he used, lol) 

Oh, The Walk of the Penguin Mich, would you recommend getting the ferry tickets in advance? SIL says last time she was there they just bought them at the port, how did you do it? (I trust SIL but I get paranoid )

I wouldn't call it a shit hole, but even back when I went it was dirty and unapoealing.  It really has none of the charm of other large cities.

I got my ferry ticket while at the dock the morning of.  The concierge of the hotel I was at had a schedule and the night before I left, I still had no idea which island I was going to park on for a week.  So I went through my travel book and looked at the schedule and chose an island.  About 3 hours beforehand, I got a cab that took me to the dock.  I was staying at the Intercontinental...got an incredible deal on it.

Funny story....I was met at the ferry dock in Paros by a hotel owner looking for customers.  I had no hotel reservations, and he had rooms.  He took me to his hotel on his motor bike, it was ok and I started negotiating for a week.  Very simple....bed, bathroom with a little balcony that overlooked the sea.  I wasn't spending much time in it, so agreed.  It was about 2 blocks from town, and if I wasn't in town, I was on the beach.  Most relaxing vacation ever.

[cael]

That sounds great. I'll just go with getting our ferry tickets once we get there. We booked our 2 nights in Santorini already, and right away the owner emailed letting us know to ask her if we had any questions and let them know when we'll be arriving so they can pick us up. Can't wait!

[Deleted]

We usually use Kayak to get the best flight deals and when planning for a family vacation its always better to have everhting planned and in place to avoid last minute uncertainties.

[mmhmm]

Welcome, @moneywise. Good to have you with us! 

[cael]

Sorry to bump the old thread but didn't think I needed to start a new one - we just got back from the trip! OMG. So bummed to be home, it was so great. We did a lot of jumping around place to place and as a result of that, got to see a good wide representation of the country that a general tourist spending a week in Athens would not get to see.

We flew in and spent 2 nights in Athens seeing the sights, then took the overnight ferry to Crete to spend 3 nights with family in Heraklion. Crete is awesome and next time we're going to plan more days there. Took a fast ferry to Santorini (!!!) for two nights, which gave us a day and a half there. Wish we'd have stayed longer, but we got to two beaches, did some shopping and saw the sunset in Oia, which is that typical Greek islands white buildings on the cliff place you see on postcards. From there took the ferry back to Piraeus, got our rental car (after locking the keys in the car the second we got it! ), stayed in an old but charming hotel for one night, then drove north to Volos. Spent 3 nights up there with family in their village, saw the house my father in law grew up in which is still occupied by a crazy uncle who is a doll, and drove back down and spent a night in a nice hotel on the beach before flying home Monday.

We are mourning the loss of the food (especially the aunts' home cooking!), the loss of the afternoon siesta everyone takes, the beautiful scenery and sun, ugh. It was seriously so great. My SIL hadn't been in 15 years but we've all vowed to make the next trip way sooner than that, hopefully 5-6 years we can all go back. I'm glad we went now, their one uncle is in pretty poor health and the other's health is questionable too. The crazy uncle in their yaya's house had a big box of old family pictures and he let us take a bunch of them. We have almost no photos of my deceased FIL and the uncle had a lot of photos of them as young men, which was so sweet to see! He also had photos of DH and SIL as kids that had been mailed to them, and we took several of those since we have almost no photos of DH and SIL as kids either. Everyone was super happy to finally meet my husband and they were so good to us. The Greek mama (aunt in our case) pushing delicious food on you until you burst is a true story.

We went to the Acropolis, the Acropolis museum, several other temples and sites around there, went to Knossos and an amazing mountaintop monastery on Crete, went to the beach in the village, it was so great. On our last day (Sunday), driving back down towards Athens we saw crowds and lines of people at the banks, which I guess they were going to close, so people were starting to panic. The family were all watching the news about the crisis the whole time, but none of them really had good enough English to explain it well to us. They all seemed to think leaving the EU would be a bad idea, however.

So anyway, anyone else who's been to or is going to Greece please chime in if you want, eager to hear others' experiences too! We fell totally in love and are already planning and making lists for the next time we go. We told everyone we would've stayed, but we missed the cat too much.

[plugginaway22]

Great report! We are still planning our Sept trip while listening to others say we are crazy! 
Feel free to send any travel tips my way!

[cael]

plugginaway22 what's your plan, are you doing Italy then Greece? I remember someone saying they were doing a cruise then seeing Greece?

[plugginaway22]

No, just Greece, in and out of Athens, half on mainland, half on islands, Naxos the only one certain.
We are renting car to drive west to Nafplion and stay there as a base for day trips. Then ferry to islands.
I am so excited and just hope it all works out...DH being negative right now.

[cael]

Great! Let's see... ferrying to the islands... we were told most lines are good, but Minoan is the one to try and get. We loved Santorini and the ferry back stopped at Milos, Ios and Sifnos which all looked gorgeous from the deck of the ferry - we couldn't get off but we took pics When you get to Athens, if you can find a travel agency in town they can book your ferry tickets for you instead of having to get them at the port - saves a little time. You can get slightly upgraded seats for maybe 10 more euros, I'm not sure it's worth it but I think we had more spacious seats on the ferries we did the upgrade for (and one we were at a table).

Have you booked anything yet? And are you staying in Athens or just going straight west? We liked where we stayed in Athens, there was a rooftop pool and lounge (great views of this one hill and the Parthenon!), there were several cafes within walking distance for breakfast, and a travel agency across the street. We were impressed with the Metro - it was pretty clean, modern and not super expensive. I can give you metro tips to get to places if you want too - and if you can, get to Lycabettus hill to the restaurant on top for dinner, it's amazing! You have to climb a million stairs then a cable car takes you up, but it's really cool.

Car rental - we called ahead of time to request a GPS and it's a good thing we did, as the office we got the car at only had one GPS, so if we hadn't requested it we might've been out of luck. Most of the cars will probably be stick, unless you ask for an automatic. They're all small too, so plan accordingly luggage-wise (we were lucky all our crap plus 3 of us fit in the one mid-sized automatic they had for us, lol) Do not, I repeat DO NOT, lock the key in the car with all your luggage and money and passports like my SIL did.

Unless you have a real need to be in contact with folks back here, I wouldn't advise getting a phone or special plan for calls or anything - there's wifi literally everywhere so you'll have that at least for email or facebook or whatever. We got a phone halfway thru the trip so we could call the family members to coordinate with them, but the minutes seemed to run out quick. We only paid about 40 euros for it though. SIL paid $40 for unlimited international texting (Verizon) while we were away since she had to be able to contact her husband and kids (rather, they had to be able to contact her, lol). My sprint iphone did not pick up any of the networks over there so I couldn't even roam text or call.

Tell your husband... we didn't feel there was any point when we felt unsafe or insecure, about ourselves or our things. We had those Pacsafe bags for being out in Athens, and other places besides Athens we felt even less inclined to be extra paranoid about our stuff than we would be anywhere else. Of course we left right before things got worse, but we didn't feel unsafe at any point.

Oh and for cash - the money changing places charge you commissions and fees on top of the exchange rate (you'll probably have a better exch rate than we did), but when we took money out of the ATM it was just the straight exchange rate, so that actually saved us money. Of course I don't know what the ATM situation will be like in September - we were able to take a few hundred euros out a couple days before they started restricting withdrawls. Maybe see if you can exchange money here before you go, we wondered if doing it in the US would save us anything on the commission and fees.

Send me a PM if you want, happy to share more of where we went and what we did! You will love it. 

[cael]

OH - and the food... just eat everything. Seriously. Get a lot of frappes (Nescafe iced coffee), get a lot of Greek salads, and eat ALL the cheese. Olive oil on everything. Even when we were at hotels, we literally didn't have one bad meal. Find bakeries for breakfasts and get coffee and pastries, don't do hotel breakfasts (they seemed expensive and not as authentic as coffee and pastry!) The plain Greek yogurt over there is better than here so eat a lot of that with fruit or honey... here, Fage is the closest to the real thing, all the others are awful. Be prepared to come home and have a period of intense mourning for loss of the food. Get some good olive oil and honey to bring home.

::crying now because there aren't any Greek places near me for lunch::

[Deleted]

Jul 7, 2015 11:09:27 GMT -5 cael said:

OH - and the food... just eat everything. Seriously. Get a lot of frappes (Nescafe iced coffee), get a lot of Greek salads, and eat ALL the cheese. Olive oil on everything. Even when we were at hotels, we literally didn't have one bad meal. Find bakeries for breakfasts and get coffee and pastries, don't do hotel breakfasts (they seemed expensive and not as authentic as coffee and pastry!) The plain Greek yogurt over there is better than here so eat a lot of that with fruit or honey... here, Fage is the closest to the real thing, all the others are awful. Be prepared to come home and have a period of intense mourning for loss of the food. Get some good olive oil and honey to bring home.

::crying now because there aren't any Greek places near me for lunch::

Brother's Kouzina, www.brotherskouzina.com, on Route 1. by Bertucci's. Any friggin' pizza place in Salem, Beverly and Danvers is usually owned by Greeks, go there. Brother's in downtown Danvers has Greek specialties. Shall I continue? My dad's ex-girlfriend is Greek and Danvers is loaded with them.

[cael]

Jul 11, 2015 4:58:24 GMT -5 @empressspunkles said:

Jul 7, 2015 11:09:27 GMT -5 cael said:

OH - and the food... just eat everything. Seriously. Get a lot of frappes (Nescafe iced coffee), get a lot of Greek salads, and eat ALL the cheese. Olive oil on everything. Even when we were at hotels, we literally didn't have one bad meal. Find bakeries for breakfasts and get coffee and pastries, don't do hotel breakfasts (they seemed expensive and not as authentic as coffee and pastry!) The plain Greek yogurt over there is better than here so eat a lot of that with fruit or honey... here, Fage is the closest to the real thing, all the others are awful. Be prepared to come home and have a period of intense mourning for loss of the food. Get some good olive oil and honey to bring home.

::crying now because there aren't any Greek places near me for lunch::

Brother's Kouzina, www.brotherskouzina.com, on Route 1. by Bertucci's. Any friggin' pizza place in Salem, Beverly and Danvers is usually owned by Greeks, go there. Brother's in downtown Danvers has Greek specialties. Shall I continue? My dad's ex-girlfriend is Greek and Danvers is loaded with them.

we actually went to Brother's Kouzina for the first time a few months ago, it was good! I mean real, legit Greek food like moussaka and stuff - nowhere within walking distance to work although I know at least several Greek-owned pizza places I could try for a gyro sometime! Peabody, Danvers, Ipswich are all loaded with Greeks, and I think closer to the city it's what, Roslindale or Watertown? Gotta check out the restaurants down there sometime.

My favorite for sit-down (since I never venture to Boston lol) so far is Ithaki in Ipswich - sooooo good.

Oh man, I'm hungry now... good thing we're going to the Ipswich Greek festival tomorrow

[plugginaway22]

ymam.proboards.com/user/90
Not sure how to 'tag' you, haha.
Just found this and want to thank you! Our trip is coming up quickly and I am SO excited!!
Yes, we will be traveling strapped with Euros, not sure how much yet.
Am trying to plan my packing list to NOT over pack. Of course I suddenly have a tooth that is bothering me, so begged dentist to get me in this week.
Have lots to get ready around the house as we are having house sitters for the 2 weeks we are gone.
Cannot wait for the food!  And cannot wait to swim in the Aegean Sea!
  

[whoisjohngalt]

Oh cael - didn't see your update until now - so happy you had a great time!!

I couldn't read your posts in details bc I was beginning to salivate over the description of your experience. 

[cael]

Aug 18, 2015 21:09:21 GMT -5 plugginaway22 said:

ymam.proboards.com/user/90
Not sure how to 'tag' you, haha.
Just found this and want to thank you! Our trip is coming up quickly and I am SO excited!!
Yes, we will be traveling strapped with Euros, not sure how much yet.
Am trying to plan my packing list to NOT over pack. Of course I suddenly have a tooth that is bothering me, so begged dentist to get me in this week.
Have lots to get ready around the house as we are having house sitters for the 2 weeks we are gone.
Cannot wait for the food!  And cannot wait to swim in the Aegean Sea!
  

Oh the Aegean is beauuuutiful, the swimming will be great! And yes the food is amazing. I haven't read back in the thread and have a terrible memory, what areas are you going to? ...Oh right, Athens and a few islands, which ones? We didn't go to Naxos, we were on Crete, Santorini, and saw Ios, Milos and .... one more... Oh, Sifnos (sp?) from the ferry. Are you flying Delta? Don't forget the boozaholic drinks are free!

If you want to send me a PM with your email address I can send you some pics or other advice! How long are you staying in Athens?

So excited for you, you will love it!

[cael]

plugginaway22, not sure if you're back yet or not? Want to hear all about it!

[plugginaway22]

We are riding a ferry boat to Naxos island! Amazing trip so far! Thank you!

[cael]

Enjoy the islands, they're amazing!

[Deleted]

I went to Athens and Santorini a few years ago. Amazing history, culture, art, food. The most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. Have a blast!