Can anyone recommend a tour guide for parts of Athens and Knossos? We had a guide in Rome which was amazing for hitting the high points of the Vatican and navigating us through history and the crowds. Would perfer someone that just does this rather than a big tour company.
I know there are some in Rick's guide book. We will contact them but we had our Rome guide recommend by a friend so thought we would see if anyone else had experice with someone not on his list.
Thanks!
BEst place I know to get personal guide is https://tourguides.viator.com/Listing.aspx?Country=Greece&Region=Attiki&City=Athens VIATOR also has listing in he HEading of its Athens section for HERAKLION (which wold e the Knossos guide). What I like about this source so much is taht each guide introduces himself/herself tells credentials and their specialty, AND specifically what their fee is for 2 people or for small groups, and minimum hrs... then there are reviews. You really get a feel for which guide will suit you best ... and viator does seem to attract wonderful guides.... I would go with this list rather than R.S., whose recommendations are probably swamped anyway... and with Viator, you'd get info from recent tourists.
We used Aristotle whose last name I can’t remember for a private tour for 7 of us in Athens. I got his name from a trip report that a woman traveling with 13 year old twins wrote. I had a very mixed group in terms of level of interest and thought this was a good sign.
We all very much enjoyed him and my brother in law who frequently travels to Athens wanted his card for next time he was in Greece.
I found his contact information on viator that Janet recommended. I can’t remember his last name but as I recall he was only Aristotle there. There is also a review by me on the site.
Beth
At Knossos we booked private guide Lena through Niki Vlachou at Olympic Tours. I don't have Lena's last name handy but that's probably sufficient as a reference. Lena was timely, articulate, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Niki also found a guide for Mycenae for us. The main site at Knossos is large enough that I'm glad we allowed some extra time to wander about after the tour. We went on a late Sunday afternoon in the first week of June and the site wasn't busy. Even at that hour there were unattached guides trying to form up tour groups, but after traveling this far to see something important to me I didn't want to leave the choice of guide completely to chance. (Niki is recommended is the RS guidebook.) I think Lena was also available to tour the Archeological Museum with us, but the timing didn't work out. BTW there is a simple but tasty and pleasant cafe onsite near the ticket gate at Knossos where you can buy something cold as well as sandwiches. We took the city bus from near the Archeological Museum direct route to Knossos; the bus picks up in the parking lot near the ticket office/exit gate. It wasn't a long trip so a taxi probably wouldn't be expensive either. We waited until we were ready to leave the city to pick up a rental car.
There is more info about our trip to Crete in our trip report: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/two-week-trip-to-crete-and-greek-mainland
