This June, early or mid, me and my GF are taking ten days to tour Greece so we are putting together a plan.
Personally I’m not sure if I’d rather concentrate on going around the Aegean islands or traveling inland, certainly would like to visit Crete and Santorini though
I was also thinking that it would be nice to rent a car and use home stays more than hotels, I’d appreciate any experience from Dopers that may have tried that.
Last July, I went to Santorini and Athens.
First, everyone speaks English. It’s a required subject in the public schools, and tourism is the major industry.
Second, you will walk everywhere. If you are not in shape for walking, start training. Have some good, solid walking shoes, and thin socks. It will be hot. If you skin is very sensitive, or you are bald, bring a hat.
Third, unless you are staying at a really expensive hotel in downtown Athens, don’t assume your hotel will be air conditioned. Ask.
Bring some clothes that will dry quickly, because you may end up washing things in your room and hanging them to dry–you can buy folding hangers at Amazon.
Try to go to Athens to see the Acropolis and the Acropolis museum, and give yourself a whole day.
Driving there is crazy. The streets are about 2.5 meters wide, with tons of blind curves, and there are buses that require you to pull to the side, endangering foot traffic, and people go at crazy speeds, plus if you can’t drive stick, forget it altogether. And in Santorini, the main road is closed to vehicles in the summer.
Any place you eat will be at least good. Some places will be unbelievably fantastic, but nothing will be bad.
Bring shorts and T-shirts or tank tops. It will be hot. Near the Aegean, it will be cooler, but humid, and at the elevations, it will be a very hot dry heat. Bring sunscreen.
You can’t flush to TP there. You flush waste, but the TP goes in the trash. Practice this for a week at home. It wasn’t hard for me, because when we had well water, we did that, but it drove my mother crazy.
Tip in cash even when you pay by credit or debit card. When I was there, Greek citizens had a very small limit of what they could withdraw from a bank in a day, so cash tips were lifesavers.
Tip adult musicians who play well if you enjoy them, but don’t tip the Roma (gypsy) children. First, they don’t generally play well, and second, they are currently exempt from school so they can spend their time soliciting money, but the government has been trying to change that law (according to my uncle, who goes to Greece all the time, and married a Greek woman), and require and children living in the country to attend school with no exemption for Roma.
That’s off the top of my head. Feel free to ask me questions.
I loved Greece. I was there for nine days. I wish I could have stayed longer.
If you go to Athens, get the fried fish at Damigos. It’s on the Plaka, but a little hard to see. The fish with skordalia is to die for. It practically melts. I recommend the red wine, as well.
Crete and Santorini are must-sees IMHO, especially if you like ruins (Knossos + museum and Phaistos, Akrotiri) and / or spectacular landscapes. Both have some very lively places to go out and party if that’s what you’re after.
I found Athens very disappointing. Noisy, not very clean and… well, boring. Even the Acropolis didn’t do much for me and the shopkeepers around it were quite rude. There are some nice museums, though.
I go to Greece at least one a year. I spend most of my time on Crete, although the mainland as well. Last trip was about 8 months ago, at the hight of the financial crisis. I had a lovely time, no issues whatsoever.
Athens is phenomenal. Once. Its dirty and has a higher crime rate. But the history! Spend a day or two, definitely see the acropolis etc…
You can spend a week or more on Crete. Driving on Crete is crazy, but better than the mainland. I do it all the time. Be prepared to speed like crazy or if not, to drive practically on the shoulder so that crazy speeders can pass you. The cretian people are lovely.
Heraklion is a big dirty city, but (again) the history! Spend a day. Go to the archeological museum. Chania is a lovely city. Walk the Venetian harbor. Fun to stay there but it’s loud at night.
Hike the Samaria gorge. Bring water (be surprised how many tourists forget to do this).
The southern side of the island is a but less touristy. Just take the car and go. Don’t bother making hotel reservations, there will be cheap, (mostly) clean rooms to let in every small town you go to.
As long as you stay out of the places dedicated to the tourist trade, you won’t get bad food anywhere. Also vegetarian friendly if that’s important.
Have fun! I can’t wait until my next trip.
My mid-uni trip was to Athens and Crete. I was part of the so-called “stones group”, the people whose main focus was on seeing broken old buildings.
The first day in Athens we all ended up at the Acropolis. You may want to find out the opening hours and go as early as possible, before the rocks start melting: June isn’t as hot as July but that’s like saying that the Pacific isn’t as salty as the Dead Sea.
In Crete, we badgered the other people into visiting the Labyrinth - eventually, even those dudes who’d spent one day driving all the way back to some beach on the E corner of the island went and loved it. And you know, they were about as far from being “museums people” as we could find 
The “landscapes people” liked the Canyon of Samaria better than the other sights; our group also went to Matala and to Agios Nikolaos. We would have liked to visit the museum of El Greco in Heraclion but it was closed.
Back in Athens, we did most of our “souvenir shopping” in the last day.
Lots of people speak at least enough English and Italian to buy and sell in; sign language is also universally spoken (careful with those windmilling hands). You may find that once you figure the alphabet you’ll understand more signs than you’d expect, thanks to the amount of Greek roots in Spanish.
I think we’ll handle the heat, we live in Bangkok and now temperatures are hovering around 40C so it’s going to be nice to spend time in a cooler weather!
Good point about driving manual, I’ve never bothered learning it so that’s a problem; as for crazy driving, again, you know… Bangkok. 
I know nothing about Greek food, are there any dishes I should try?
Looks nice, I’ll put it on the list, thanks.
I’m quite interested in history and archeology, my GF into landscapes and nature, looks like a win-win situation. From Santorini to Crete by boat or plane? I read that the entrance to Santorini by boat is spectacular.
Good tips, thank you. I don’t think we’ll spend that much time in Crete though, unless it can be used as hub to travel the islands around, is that feasible? We haven’t decided on the islands/mainland conundrum yet, for example I’d like to go to Meteora.
Good tips about Crete too, I’ll check them out.
In case we do rent a car, how long it takes to go across the island? Just to get an idea.
About now is when you should be going. Or October. You’ll avoid the excessive heat.
On the mainland, try to visit Olympia and the theatre of Epidauros. The acoustics at the latter are perfect. I went on a school trip over 30 years ago and we each took turns standing on the brass marker in the middle and spouting Greek poetry and could be heard absolutely clearly from the stone benches.
My wife and I went to Greece last September, and had a great time, so congratulations on your good taste!
Meteora was amazing. But it’s a long way away - it takes about 5 hours on the train from Athens, so you may not find that you can fit it in if you also want to do Crete and Santorini.
We did it as a 3 day/2 night excursion from Athens organised by a tour company in Athens, stopping for a night and a morning in Delphi on the way home. If you’re fit enough, I’d recommend taking a taxi up to the highest monastery you want to visit and then walking back into town via the other monasteries: I think you get the best views that way.
Kostas was really helpful, so if you do go for it I’d recommend dropping him an e-mail to find out more about what he can offer.
I’m not going to try and give you times, but count on potholed mountain roads. Greece is one of those places which could have that legend about how a bunch of mountains and hills God had set aside fell off His pocket when He laid down to rest. “Geologically interesting”, one of my classmates called it.
Fair enough, I’ve been through a few instances were it turned out that going from A to B in seemingly small islands took an absurdly long time. I wonder if going by sea would make sense to cut travel times.
By the way, you mentioned we should visit the labyrinth, I searched and found mentions of at least three labyrinths (or supposed labyrinths anyway), which one did you have in mind?
Knossos.
THE labyrinth. The one built by Dedalus.
Walking down to the town from the Meteora monasteries sounds like a great idea, do you think it could be made as a one day trip? Leaving early in the morning and returning to Athens at night?
In case you have trouble finding it over there, take plenty of Windex.
I think you’ll struggle to do it by train. When we looked at it, there were only one or two trains from Kalambaka back to Athens; I think the last one left around 4 PM, and the train up from Athens only got you in around 12.30/1 PM.
I think there are some one-day tours available, but I suspect they’ll just take you to the monasteries and one or two scenic viewpoints: the walk from the furthest monastery back into town took at least a couple of hours.
In the end we went to Northern Italy last year, Milan, Verona, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Venice and finished in Trieste were we attended a concert by Loreena McKennitt, it was a perfect ending for that trip.
Anyways… I resurrected this because now we are going to Greece for sure, plane tickets already in hand for 05-16 October.
I’m considering a couple options and I’d like to have some opinions on them, one would be to do a cruise of the southern islands, Santorini and Crete at least, the other to visit Mount Olympus.
For a cruise we wouldn’t want anything longer than 4 days, I haven’t checked that yet but I don’t know if it would be worth it, excluding that we would take a plane to Santorini and perhaps a ferry to Crete, then fly back to Athens for the last two days in Greece.