I have been researching 4 day guided tours out of Athens including the hotspots (Epidaurus, Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi etc) I am confused by the selection. If you have used one of the companies providing these tours I would love recommendations.
If you have alternative ideas I am also happy for you to comment.
Thank you as always for the help I’ve had from fellow travellers
Margaret
I know Janet has recommended a specific two-day tour that hits some of the areas you mention. I hope she notices this thread and weighs in soon. She may know about longer tours as well.
Margaret, I am not going to spend time evaluating all the 4-day guided tours for you, without knowing more about your trip overall, and what your interests are. Do you have a long time in Greece, or are you trying to do a "lightning round" to check off the maximum number of famous destinations? Are all 4 of those sights MUSTS for you? If so -- my choice of the various tours would be ASTORIA -- http://astoria.gr/tours-monday-5day.html This is really a 4 OR a 5-day tour (because at Delphi, persons either return to Athens, or get on a connecting bus to do Meteora).
I like this tour specifically because it is more relaxed, and gives you almost 24 hours in beautiful Nafplion, as FREE time... enabling you to wander the most beautiful Old Town in all of Greece, on your own, have a "front-row seat" at the seafront for an awesome sunset, and check out a superb small museum right on the (marble-paved) square (it has a splendid short video that explains the whole area's history) ... and then have brunch on your own, before moving on to Mycenae with MUCH greater understanding of the area's history. Many 4-day Classical tours rush you thru Nafplio stopping only for a brief lunch. NOTE: this tour offers 2 levels of hotel. In NAFPLIO, specify the hotel that is right IN Old City, not the deluxe one outside of town.
The 2 day tour that I recommend is Chat Tours #6 - http://www.chatours.gr/tours.php?exc=8&exccat=1 ... it gives you a short Corinth Canal stop, Mycenae & Epidaurus, and Nafplio... and doesn't try to cram it into 1 day. Like the above, it gives you the afternoon and next AM as FREE time in Nafplio. Again, choose the in-town hotel over the deluxe one thats outside town.
Thank you so much Janet for your information.
We have plenty of time but a limited budget. We thought for this part of Greece having a driver to take us to perhaps harder to get to places and having a guide to give us really good information, taking this sort go tour may be a useful alternative. Generally we are 'slow' travellers organising everything ourselves.
Briefly, our interests are the history, culture and the food.
Thank you again.
Margaret
I understand what you are tr ying to do, but I don't know that you will save any money by hiring a driver .... you would have to pay him what he'd make as a taxi driver or car-for-hire in Athens, and for an 8-hour period that would be about €400, as far as I know ... and if you were going overnight, there would be that additional cost for a 24-hour hire, plus his meals and lodging. The CHAT tour is quite reasonable as those things go... check it out.
If you want detailed help on these forums, more information is needed. From your initial post, one gets the idea that you want to cover a lot of ground quickly. Now, it seems, you want to go slowly. Also, people inquiring about guided tours are usually not cost-parers, so it was hard to tell what you really wanted.
If you are considering D-I-Y, it certainly can be done, I've done it myself ... doing Delphi in an overnight trip, also going to Nafplio and visting nearby famous sites. You could do this on local busses, but you'd need to take one site per day, because bus schedules are not devised for tourist day-trips. And you can't get enough info on just a travel forum to DIY satisfactorily; you'd need to dig into guidebooks, find schedules for busses and ferries, study maps etc. I wish you good luck and happy planning!
I am so sorry. My apologies. I clearly have not explained myself well. I always try to keep my questions brief which sometimes makes for confusion.
I will try again
Generally we are slow travellers, wandering along on a shoe string, which we are going to be doing for 5 months.
However, after researching getting to these key spots out of Athens, we decided that taking a guided bus tour which lasts for 4 (or maybe 5) days such as the Astoria one mentioned earlier, might be a good idea in this instance. We thought it could be more informative and not too expensive.
When I looked online there were many to choose from. I simply wondered if a fellow traveller had joined one of these 4 day tour groups, and on the off chance that a recommendation might be made for us.
Once again my apologies. People are so helpful I feel bad messing them around
Margaret
No no Margaret, do not feel bad, you were not "messing us around" ... you just hadn't given us enough information about your travel style that we needed, in order to be helpful. I do urge you to go to your New Zealand Library, and try to get some of the more useful guide books -- Rough Guide is the best and most thorough overall, for travellers like you. If you have access to a mail order resource like Amazon, there are even used copies available at half the cover price. Youdon't need the latest edition because yu won't be using them for hotel or restaurant prices, you'd be studying the highlights, history, and methods of traveling around. Good luck!
