Greece Tours

They are different products. Mainland routes are guided multi-day itineraries out of Athens with transport, hotels and a fixed order of stops. Island tours are single-day and booked one at a time, so an island stay is assembled from separate bookings plus your own accommodation. Some longer routes include an island section by ferry, which is the middle option if you want both without booking them separately.

The core of most mainland routes is the Peloponnese and central Greece: Corinth, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Nafplio, Olympia and Delphi, then north to the monasteries at Meteora near Kalambaka. Longer routes add Thessaloniki and northern Greece. The stops are archaeological sites and monasteries rather than beaches, and the driving days are long because the sites are spread across the mainland.

Crete, Santorini, Mykonos, Rhodes, Corfu, Paros and Naxos carry the most, with Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Milos and Skiathos carrying fewer. What is on offer follows the island: Santorini runs caldera and volcano boat trips, Crete runs Knossos and gorge walks, Mykonos runs boat trips to Delos. These are local operators, so departure points are on the island itself, not in Athens.

Mainland routes run through most of the year, and spring and autumn are easier for the archaeological sites because much of the walking is in open sun with little shade. Island day tours are concentrated in the warmer months, when boat trips run daily; outside that window some islands drop to a handful of options. Ferry sailings also thin out off-season, which affects routes with an island section.

More than most European routes. The Acropolis, Delphi, Olympia and Mycenae are open sites on uneven stone with no vehicle access inside, and the Meteora monasteries are reached by flights of steps cut into the rock. Coaches drop off at the entrance and collect at the exit, but the site itself is on foot. Each tour page lists an activity level; the easier-paced departures are the ones to look at for older travelers.

Routes that include an island section, or that cross to southern Italy, do it by ferry, and the crossing is part of the tour rather than something you arrange. Sailings to Sicily and Puglia are long and usually overnight; inter-island hops are shorter. Because ferries depend on sea conditions, the running order of the last days on these routes can shift. Each tour page states which crossings are included.

Multi-day routes usually include breakfast at the hotel, with other meals taken at stops along the way where travelers order for themselves. Vegetarian options are available at every stop, as Greek cooking carries a large number of them by default. Stricter requirements such as Jain depend on what each stop carries, so raise them before departure rather than on the day. Day tours do not include meals unless the tour page says so.

Routes pairing Greece with southern Italy and Sicily, or heading north through Bulgaria and Romania, suit travelers making one long trip rather than returning to the region. They spend fewer days in Greece itself and more days moving, and they end in a different country from where they started, so the return arrangements differ from a Greece-only route. If Greece is the reason for the trip, the mainland-only routes cover it more closely.