Seeking feedback on potential Greece itinerary

What I see is that your mainland itinerary looks a lot like a guided bus tour, where everything is planned out in advance by local professionals who have been doing this for years, mapping out stops, restaurant meals, places to stay, sightseeing times, and countless details that participants don't have to worry about. Trying to pull this off as an independent traveler with your own rental car, without knowing Greece well, risks running you into problems you haven't anticipated.

On top of that, be careful what you listen to from any AI. While it might give you a general idea, when it comes to planning a precise itinerary, it's just about the worst source of information you can use. It’s packed with errors and generic clichés if you don't know how to ask the right questions and dig into the details.

Just to give you a couple of examples among many others: Did the AI tell you that the Theopetra Cave closes at 3:30 PM and is closed on Tuesdays (like on October 6, 2027)? No, because you didn't ask.

You mentioned Kea—did the AI warn you that this island isn't accessible from the port of Piraeus?

If you leave Meteora around 5:00 PM, you’ll arrive in Nafplio at best a little before 11:00 PM, whether you take the route through Patras or retrace your steps back toward Athens. Is that really how you planned it? (Don't you want to have dinner that day?)

As a reminder, AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, not Accurate Intelligence...

We enjoyed a day trip from Athens to Aegina. A nice change of pace. The Saronic "slow" ferry was comfortable and took a little more than 1 hour if you're wanting to avoid long ferry rides.

We had 2.5 full days in Athens + 1 full day in Aegina, and were able to cover the major sites. You might need more time if you're partial to museums (we aren't.)

1. I have done some of these roads but not all of the Ioannina to Nafplio portion you are asking about.
2. I have also done this drive as one loop: Athens to Nafplio to Delphi to Meteora to Athens. There’s no reason not to loop as long as you aren’t rushing.

However I am afraid you are under-estimating drive times - but even more, drive “concentration”. On Oct. 5, including Delphi would make for a really long day. Without Delphi, it’s ok. I completely understand it looks ok on paper, but you have to remember Delphi is up a mountain, requires time to park, time to see it (since you are going to the trouble of getting there), time for a bathroom stop at some point, etc. An overnight somewhere is better. But yes, it’s really worth seeing.

I like that you are planning 2 nights at Meteora (yes, stay in Kastraki).

Oct. 7 - in Oct., you don’t have long days of sunlight and you are asking for trouble driving that late. Sunset is about 7pm and you should plan to arrive in Nafplio by then.

And only that one night in Nafplio? At the very least, I would look at adding a night and seeing Epidavros from there. One reason? I see 3 separate nights in Athens, which looks very inefficient. Look at the logistics of returning to Athens the morning of Oct. 10, with a brief stop at Corinth- and then see if you can ferry on to whatever island you choose.

In a completely different direction, conventional advice here is to start with your island upon arrival. It would be easy to head there on arrival day. Then you can save all your Athens days till the end of your trip. That would save you the most backtracking.

Well, personally, I would never plan a trip to take place after dark like you are intending to Nafplio. I have been to both Nafplio and Meteora but in two separate trips. There is no reason why you could not combine them in one trip but I do not think it is worth the drive for essentially one day. You say you will arrive at 11 pm on one day, spend two nights, and then leave. You could go to Epidavros on the way to Athens (we visited from Nafplio) but Mycenae is not the same direction.

I think you are trying to do too much in the time you have.

I would suggest that you would have a better sense of what you are proposing by laying out your trip in terms of nights.

The reason to combine your time is Athens is that it is an hour from the airport so it is more efficient to do it that way. We spent 3 nights at the end of our first trip to Greece but we had three of our party leave after 2 nights and still saw a fair bit.

You have 13 nights. How about something like this?

4 nights island. You arrive at 7 am. I would think you could take a ferry or fly to an island of your choice that day. As Texas Travel Mom notes, it is the most efficient routing.

1 night Delphi. Rent car upon return and drive to Delphi and spend the night.

2 nights Meteora. Stay in Kastraki which is simply lovely.

3 nights Nafplio.

3 nights Athens. Drive back to airport or port and return car.

This gives you an extra night in Nafplio, a night in Delphi, and all your three nights in Athens at the end.

Thank you everyone for these insightful replies!

@BethFL -- thank you for sketching out a potential reversed itinerary! Very helpful. Unfortunately, we really do only have 12 nights in Greece, not 13 (we arrive the morning of Oct. 4, which is our first night, and then Oct. 15 is our last night sleeping in Greece before flying on the 16th).

We spent a little more time tonight sketching out another rough draft with the feedback we've received and more attention to drive times and other logistics, and of course it is feeling a little tighter with that info, which I am sure is more realistic.

If we keep Sifnos, we may trim one night from there (from the suggested 4 to 3 total) and add a night to Athens at the end. I had already been seriously questioning my partner's idea to have our Athens nights split up, but it was only a very, very rough draft. ;-) [EDIT: I just realized I have been looking tonight at ferry info for Serfios, not Sifnos... I had listed ferry times in this comment originally but just removed them.]

Since we only have 12 nights total, the proposed new itinerary would have given us basically a day and a half in Athens (two nights), which feels rushed. Especially at the end of a trip.

BethFL, as you noted, this timing would make the most sense with an overnight near Delphi as we drive to Kastraki/Meteora. (We are open to suggestions for a place to stay near Delphi if anyone on this thread has any!)

Mycenae actually was not part of my original plan -- it was suggested by the "person" in Greece I was emailing who turned out to be AI (or, at least, using AI to answer my emails). That was one of the clues it was AI -- the way my loose itinerary of Athens-Meteora-Epidavros -- plus some island time -- suddenly had two extra sites added in as though they were a given, and listed as two separate "loops" (Meteora+Delphi and Mycenae+Epidavros), with the added suggestion, "why not add a night in Nafplio?" After reading more about Nafplio, we decided it sounded like a lovely place to spend a couple days. :-)

@TexasTravelMom: we did have two nights planned in Nafplio in my outline above; my apologies if that could have been clearer! But now we might add a third night, at BethFL's suggestion.

To be honest, I had not intended originally to stop in Delphi. But the "person" I thought I was emailing (who turned out to be AI) automatically included it in their reply, which made it sound very "easy" to stop along the way to Meteora. So thank you especially for the detail about the parking & mountain terrain (and I have since registered that Delphi is really two major sights, not just one).

Thank you also for offering some suggestions based on the outline I posted, and then also noting that reversing the order would help prevent backtracking! I'd had that possibility on my radar but had not had a chance to think through yet, since my partner and I both like the idea of ending with some easygoing island time. But not backtracking and feeling less rushed in Athens at the end is sounding more important at this point.

@traditravel -- with you 100% on the AI "definition"! Which is why I did not start with AI, and came running to this forum as soon as I realized what I had actually been emailing with.

Thank you for the suggestion of a day trip to Aegina. I am currently weighing whether a day trip or two to a Saronic island or two while staying put in Athens for more nights might be a better option? I'd love to visit a Cyclades island for a few days but I also don't want the intended island relaxation to be book-ended by a silly amount of transfer logistics. (And we would love to visit at least one of the museums in Athens while there; we may trim off an island night and give it to Athens.)

I realized tonight as my partner and I discussed all of this that when we went to Italy in 2024, seeing Rome, Venice, and Florence for a couple nights each and then driving to three locations in northwestern and southwestern Tuscany (one for an afternoon, the other two for 2-3 night each) and back to Rome all felt more doable thanks to Italy's high-speed trains linking those first three cities. It is unfortunate Greece's rail system is not more robust!

@JoLui -- thank you for the reality check on the itinerary! You make excellent points about the time and energy it can take to figure out where to eat, how to get from one place to another, etc., when one is not intimately familiar with the location. It can be so easy to forget that when the excitement of a trip kicks in and so many of the books and websites make everything sound easy (or leave out any mention of practical logistics at all in favor of selling their own image as a travel "expert").

For what it's worth, I avoid AI as much as I can for the very reasons you point out (plus, the environmental cost). I honestly thought I was emailing a live human until the second reply (I had suspicions with the first reply I got, but thought maybe the guy just has some templates he uses for common questions). The pandering tone and perfect spelling & grammar were only a couple of the clues. I didn't realize until after I sent my first email and kept exploring the website that the five Greek travel "experts" who had collaborated on the site had created their own AI tool based on their experience and knowledge.

Anyway, that realization sent me running back to this forum. ;-)

As for the light chiding you're giving me about Theoptera Cave and Kea: no, obviously I had not looked up the details yet. I was posting very late at night after too much internet trip research (just like tonight, actually...) and had not yet had a chance to investigate some of these details against our very rough first draft for an itinerary. What is in my original post is just us trying to get something on paper so we can make it less abstract and spot the problems you and the others here are graciously pointing out to us. :-)

I mentioned Kea mainly because it was late, I was tired, and it had been part of a 5-day/4-night sailing tour we had been considering. We leaned away from that tour for a few reasons -- boat seems a little smaller than we would like, I realized I was trying to recreate an experience I had elsewhere that had some key differences, not sure I want to have to make breakfasts and most lunches, not sure if we'll be satisfied by the actual amount of time on the islands. (Also, the two departure dates offered -- Oct. 5 or Oct. 10 -- would break up the trip in an odd way. But I'll link it here just in case anyone scrolling these threads for ideas finds it attractive: https://www.muchbetteradventures.com/en-us/products/9042-adventures-sail-and-explore-greek-islands/ )

We lost some of our trip-planning time to my fantasy desire to spend time on a sailboat going from island to island in Greece (and this year, all spring and summer have been non-stop crazy busy for me, otherwise I would have been diving into this a couple months ago).

Anyway, thank you again!

Ok, one final comment here and then I need to get to bed (dear god, it is late...). Regarding islands, either for 3 nights on one island, or one to two day trips from Athens, if anyone has time and bandwidth, what would you say pros and cons are for the following islands we could consider:

Sifnos
Serifos
Aegina (mentioned in this thread)
Hydra
Spetses
Poros

Any other suggestions that simply make more sense than any of these, or are special enough for a 2 or 2.5 hour ferry ride each way given the rest of our likely itinerary? (Basically the reverse of the itinerary I posted, similar to Beth FL's suggestion but with a third night in Athens at the end and only 12 nights total.) I feel like I have read about so many islands recently, and my head is swimming. Feel free to point me to other threads/comments if that's easiest.

Thank you soooooo much in advance!

I would never go to Sifnos or Serifos just to stay 3 nights (2 days), that's way too short. I'd feel guilty. It's like being invited to stay with really close friends you haven't seen in ages and only hanging out with them for 15 minutes.

Aegina is an option, considering the short ferry ride and frequent schedules.

I don't know Poros, so I don't really have an opinion other than it just doesn't appeal to me. Same goes for Spetses, which is even further away.

Hydra is a very popular (and a bit pricey) island for a day or 2 day trip. It could work, but it really comes down to personal preference.