Hello, I will be in Crete with a group of friends in Sept 2024. We will be in Chania for our stay except for one night in Heraklion before departing the next morning by ferry to Naxos. We would like to hire a private guide to visit Knossos and the museum on our final day. We prefer to hire someone in advance and not at the site.
Any recommendations? Thank you in advance.
Posted by
Colorado Mountains, USA
7396 posts
Cathy, we had an excellent guide in September 2019. Since that was almost 5 years ago, I had to look thru some old e-mails for details. I seem to recall that she was also a Cathy (or Katerina? I don’t remember exactly) but can’t find any remaining correspondence either from or to her. I do remember that she made our visit more meaningful, while other people seemed to just wander around the site.
We booked her through Niki Vlachou, Rick Steves’ biggest recommendation for a guide on mainland Greece. I still have an e-mail from Niki a couple months before we reached Crete, where she set up the guided tour with her associate guide (Cathy?), and it was a €50 deposit via PayPal, followed by €100 balance paid directly to our guide the day of the tour. E-mail Niki at [email protected] to see if this is still an option.
We met our guide (wish I could recall her name for sure, but I’ll stick with Cathy) at the entrance to Knossos. This was mid-afternoon, and we finished near closing time at Knossos. She wound up riding back into downtown Iraklio with us on the town bus.
The next day, we toured the museum on our own, but we had to keep bouncing from room to room, then back again, to avoid large groups of cruise boat passengers on guided tours.
Posted by
Colorado Mountains, USA
7396 posts
Thinking about our guide some more, maybe her name was Maria, but I’m still not sure. I know she was excellent, but I’m sorry I’m drawing a blank on her name. Nikki will have an outstanding recommendation or referral.
Posted by
Ottawa, Canada
196 posts
Last May, I booked into a small group tour with Eleni from treasuresofcrete.gr. We met her at the Knossos ticket office and she led us through the Palace for about 90 minutes. We then bussed to the Archeological Museum, where we spent another 90 minutes. She was excellent- very knowledgeable and a great communicator. There was only one other couple in our small group, but according to her website she also does private tours.