Athens to Meteora 2 Day bus tour

We drove to Meteora but took two tours with VisitMeteora while there. They both were very good, if that helps.

Been a while since I was there, but yeah, a tour makes sense, not so much for transport there and back, but for the tour once there. The Monasteries are located out in the country side, some public buses, but much more efficiently done with a tour.

The other alternative would be a train or bus to Kalambaka, then arrange a local tour from there. If you did that, I would suggest two nights in Kalambaka, leaving a full day for the monasteries.

In September, we spent two nights in the Meteora area, staying at Hotel Doupiani in Kastraki, and taking a half day tour of the monasteries guided by Eleftheria Psoma, whom we found through Matt Barrett's website. Eleftheria's own website is beguidedingreece.com. She was really delightful, very warm and engaging, and her fabulous tour was truly one of the highlights of our month in Greece. We communicated with her by email to set it all up, and she made it all so effortless. She's truly deserving of all the rave reviews she gets.

We also loved Hotel Doupiani. It's a serene, beautiful boutique-sized hotel. The panoramic view of the Meteora area, from the balconies of our rooms, and from the hotel's terrace, was breathtaking.

We did have a rental car for this excursion. We didn't want to have to drive into or out of the city of Athens so we rented from the airport, which we got to by cab. The drive to/from Meteora was easy. We liked having a car (versus being on a two day bus tour) because of the freedom it afforded us. We drove up to a beautiful sunset point on the evening before our tour, where we easily found roadside parking. After we parted ways with Eleftheria, we took her up on her suggestion to have lunch at the Meteora Restaurant in Kalambaka, family owned and run, and it was one of the best meals we had on our whole trip.

Thanks for the insight. We are reconsidering renting a car and will check out a private 1/2 day tour as well.

Visit Meteora is a great company and I would trust their tour from Athens. We, however, drove to Kastraki and stayed there ourselves, before joining a Visit Meteora tour of the monasteries.

PS: Big ditto for Doupiani House hotel, which is in Kastraki. Great views of the rocks. Kastraki is about 5 minutes away from Kalambaka. Again, we had a car, but there may be taxis that can get you there.

Great post as we are also planning this area. We plan to rent a car and stay at Hotel Doupani.

After our Heart of Greece tour, we also rented a car and drove to Meteora for 3 nights, 2 full days.

Since our last hotel on the RS tour was at the Acropolis View hotel, the Car Rental office was one block over on the Main Street within walking distance and we walked our bags over to the office.
It made for a convenient car pickup. (we returned it at the airport)

We stayed at the Divina Meteora Hotel and took 2 tours. One was the Sunset tour and the other was the half day sightseeing tour.
They picked us up/dropped us off from our hotel. Though they were by the same tour company, they were very different tours and visited different monasteries and I'm glad we did both.

The convenience of the guided tour is that at one monastery, they dropped us off at the top to visit the monastery and then picked us up at the bottom exit after our walk down the path. Also, we didn't have to worry about parking.

Admission to the separate monasteries was NOT included. So we paid at each monastery we visited.

The other convenience was they told us the women would have to wear shawls or skirts ( I can't remember which one) and because we were prepared, we had no problems entering the monasteries. We saw one young American couple traveling on their own and they couldn't figure out why the entrance guard wouldn't let them in even though they paid the admission fee. He kept pointing to the woman's bare shoulders and shorts and telling them she needed to cover them, but she was oblivious and went into her "I'm an ugly American" mode and argued for a long time with the guard.

Because we had a car, we had dinner at the meteoron Panorama with its wonderful views of the rocks
https://meteoronpanorama.gr
and the next day night we walked from the hotel on the Main Street and ate at Ambrosia Taverna, although there are many nice restaurants on the Main Street.

Thank you for the very helpful responses!

We rented a car, drove to Kastraki for 2 nights and then drove onward. II definitely recommend that approach. I picked up the car on the main road right by the Plaka and drove straight out of Athens and had no issues. Good luck with the trip!