Fall is the best time to visit Greece. The main tourist season has passed and the weather has cool off. Our October tour includes all the major sites of Greece and some that are still well kept secrets. The exact dates are flexible at this point to accommodate as many people who'd like to come. The price of the tour includes all accommodations and meals in Greece, plus tickets to the sites and museums. It does not include your international airfare. Single accommodations available for a suppleme
Plan to arrive in Athens in the early afternoon. Wes and I will make provisions to get you from the airport to the hotel. The tour begins in the late afternoon with a walking tour of the Acropolis area followed by dinner in the Plaka.
On our first day in Athens we take in the best known sites of central Athens: the Agora, the Pynx, and the New Museum of the Acropolis.
On our last day in Athens, we finally visit the famous Acropolis itself in the morning. After that we take a brief tour of The National Archaeological Museum to get a preview of the material culture we will be seeing in the rest of the tour.
We leave Athens for Nafplio, a beautiful little town in the Argolid about 80 miles to the south. We spend two nights there and travel to the nearby Bronze Age sites of Tiryns and Mycenae. We also take in Corinth, Isthmia, and the spectacular theater of Epidaurus during our stay.
We leave Nafplio and travel along the south coast of the Peloponnese for our next stop in the famed pirate haunts of Monembasia.
After Monembasia, we work our way along the southern coast of the Peloponnese to our next stop in Sparta. Alas, there isn't much left of Sparta itself, but nearby is the Byzantine settlement of Mystras, where the court of the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople relocated during the Frankish occuptation of the 13th century.
The drive from Sparta to our next stop in Kalamata takes us through the spectacular Taygetus mountain range. In Kalamata we take a guided tour of the Ben Olive Mill: A family-owned olive grove offering award-winning olive oil tours and tastings. We explore their organic production methods and sample their extra virgin olive oils.
Between Kalamata and Ancient Olympia, our next stop, lies the ruins of Messene, a city with a remarkable history. It boast the most extensive extant city walls from antiquity.
Olympia is known as the birthplace of the Olympic Games, which were held every four years starting in 776 BC to honor the Greek god Zeus.
Delphi was the location of the most revered prophetic sanctuary of Apollo. We visit the site and view the impressive remains in the local museums. After lunch we head into the mountains of central Greece, a regions once called Roumeli. Our destination Kalambaka, the village at the site of Meteora.
At Meteora, we visit the monasteries that are almost miraculously perched on the peaks of cliffs. Lunch is at a family owned restaurant just north of Meteora called "The Bird's Nest, which features local cuisine. We drive north into Macedonia for our stop at the small village of Vergina.
At Vergina, we visit the tomb of Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great, which was built directly over the site where the tomb cluster was excavated. After which we return south, pass by Mt. Olympus, and stop for the night at the resort city of Kamena Vourla.
From Kamena Vourla, you make your connections for your flights out of Greece at the Athens airport. Since we'll be driving to the airport from about 60 miles away, don't book flights out before around 11 AM in the morning.
From Kamena Vourla, you make your connections for your flights out of Greece at the Athens airport. Since we'll be driving to the airport from about 60 miles away, don't book flights out before around 11 AM in the morning.