It’s not easy to imagine less than 30 years ago Greece was considered to be a third world developing country. Today, Athens can be compared to most other European capitals with an easy transportation system, first class hotels and wonderful restaurants. Yet it still has it’s marvelous history and rich culture intact. Entry requirements to the European Union perhaps started this modernizing revolution, but the awarding of the 2004 Summer Olympics cleaned up the country.

I never had a great desire to visit Greece, but the time finally came to dispel my own false images and of course I was wonderfully surprised. Stepping into the new modern Athens airport I felt instantly comfortable with my surroundings. Although a large airport it didn’t feel crowded or confusing. After clearing customs and immigrations, we stepped out to the public areas and easily found our contact.

Ray and I decided on taking a fully escorted tour for this trip. Greece has is too extensive and has so much rich history and detail we would do ourselves a disservice to rely on a travel guidebook to get around. The history came to life with the story telling of our excellent guide who also handled the traffic and strange street names.

Our favorite part of an escorted tour was our not having to handle our luggage from arrival at the airport to finally returning to the airport ten days later. Brendan (Globus) Tours would take our bags to our hotel rooms each stop, and we would put them outside the room door in the morning and that’s the last we saw of them until the next stop. Even for the cruise, we did not handle our bags after clearing security. By the time we disembarked, our luggage was already loaded onto the bus.

Another great advantage of an escorted tour was that 95% of our expenses had been prepaid. No matter how well you prepare yourself for a European trip, you will spend twice as much as you expect and with the weaker US dollar these days, it was very noticeable.

Our tour started with two nights in Athens and we had a full day for sightseeing and time on our own for museums. Athens was ready for the Olympics, both is building and in security. Our tour was for six nights and included Delphi, Olympia and Nauplia. Our guide was Diana whose knowledge of ancient history made this tour very exciting. She took care of all the hotel arrangements, purchased the entry tickets to the sites and got us into the front of the lines. This on top of answering very patiently all of our mundane questions.

Following the land tour was a four day cruise to Mykonos, Rhodes, Patmos and Kusadasi, Turkey. We left from Piraeus which is one very busy harbor with a endless number of ferry companies. If you have dreams of Greek Island hopping you had better be well prepared for confusion.

Our cruise ship was the Royal Olympic, Titan. Not much more glamorous than a tugboat, it did get the job done of taking us around the ports in comfort. It is a smaller vessel, which is an advantage because these are small ports and if there were 3000 people getting on and off, well, it would take some time and overwhelm the island.

If you have any choice in picking your travel time period, try to go in early May or later September and October. The crowds would be significantly reduced, the weather more comfortable, and the historic sites bearable. Although we traveled in July, tourism was down quite a bit because it was only two weeks before the Olympics. But in some locations, such as Rhodes, there were still 20 big buses lines up at the cruise pier to unload the tourists. We were very fortunate to have only 15 members in our group, so we were able to spread out in our 40 passenger bus and everyone could have a window seat. Another advantage to off season traveling.

All in all, everything was perfect. The escorted tour went very smoothly, we had a great little group and Greece was a perfect destination.

This guy has his eye on my shrimp!

For more specifics Call or