back from 2 week trip to Greece!

We are back from our trip to Greece and I am going to post in Trip Reports but thought I would put some summary comments in this forum.
We had the trip of a life time. We were there for two weeks. There were seven of us—myself and my husband, my husband’s brother, our three kids (21, 25, 27) and my daughter’s husband. We went to Santorini (3 nights), Naxos (4 nights), Napflio (4 nights) and Athens (3 nights—although half our group went home after 2). There was more to do everywhere than we had time but where we would really have liked one more day was Naxos.

Starting in Oia was perfect for getting over jet lag. The only disadvantage of starting on the islands is that it got hotter as time went on and the main land is hotter than the islands. We ended up with highs of 97 in Nafplio and 95 in Athens in the first week of June. We went to the beach in Nafplio and to air conditioned museums in Athens. But I think despite this weather disadvantage that the order was preferable for appreciating Greece.

I had way too much planned than we could do. So my advice would be to plan it and then go with the flow. That may be particularly true with a large group. We ended up visiting a winery in Nemea that we would not have had the contact information for had I not researched it. So you never know when your research will be useful. It was a nice change from visiting ruins.

We did not rush except for one day when we went to Mycanae, Nemea, and the winery. Everyone was glad we did but some people got cross at being pushed to leave Mycanae after two hours. So I was really glad that for the most part we moved at the slowest person’s pace.

We did not insist that people stay together but for the most part we did. My youngest son really wanted to climb the 999 steps to the Palmidi fortress and asked me to go with him at 7:30 am (because of the heat). I told everyone else we were going and they were welcome to join. To my surprise, we had seven people out of the house at 7:45 am.
I found Rick Steve’s guides good for when there was more than we could easily see but that many times we spent a lot more time than he seemed to suggest. It was great for the National Archeological Museum but we spent the entire morning at the Palmidi fortress and it was several of our group’s favorite activity.

We stayed in air bnbs everywhere but Naxos. It was more economical for a group and gave us common spaces to gather. But we had some problems in 2 of the 3 places meeting up to get entrance. In the U.S., lock boxes with combinations that can be changed are common. But we had to meet people which didn’t work completely smoothly. My husband also missed having a desk to help (we all loved Kymata in Naxos) so that is a tradeoff with an air bnb.
We ended up ordering take out about half the time. We had great common spaces in our rentals (and rented roof top room in Kymata in Naxos). It was more economical but also less time consuming than eating out. And sometimes we were just too tired to do anything else.
We rented cars for at least part of the time everywhere. We had reserved a van in Santorini through Vaezos but the van was somewhere else. They gave us two automatic cars instead which we ended up being pleased about. The roads are narrow and the drivers are aggressive. We ended up changing our reservation for a van from Athens airport to two cars.
We rented from Athens Car Rental. They did not have a map for us and we should have gone back into the airport and bought one. They told us where to return the car but upon return it was not clear because the red lane (and we thought they said “line”) was a no parking zone. I have never had to return a car to a different place than I rented it from and I would have insisted in retrospect on being walked to where it was. It was problematic.
But overall, a simply wonderful trip and thanks to all who helped.
Beth