Our Greece Itinerary
My friend and I decided we wanted to do a girl’s trip to Greece. It was our first time to Greece and we had almost 3 weeks of traveling days (17 days to be exact) to plan. We lost one traveling day since we were flying from California. During the planning phase, we realized there are over a thousand Greek islands. Most are inhabitable, but that still leaves hundreds of Greek island destinations to choose from.
Which Islands to Visit?
We knew we wanted to include a visit to Santorini on this trip. We also knew were going to fly into Athens and spend a handful of days sightseeing there. And we were going to end our trip in Barcelona since I was going to continue traveling with my husband in Spain for the next four weeks. As a result this was our itinerary for Greece:
Travel Tips
(1) Pack Light. Use a backpacking backpack, if possible. A lot of locations have steps (especially in Santorini). To move more easily between locations, a backpacking backpack might be easier to transport between cities.
(2) Do not travel on May 1. See below.
(3) Do not forget to call your credit card and ATM companies in advance to put a travel notice on your account. This should also include any layovers you might have.
(4) Do you have trouble overcoming jetlag? For this trip I had melatonin chocolates and it helped me get over jetlag pretty quickly! I highly recommend!
Trip Highlights
(1) May 1 is also May Day. It is the first day of May and the celebration of Spring. In Greece, a common commemoration is the making of a May wreaths out of the local wildflowers, which is then hung on doorways, balconies, and many other places until it dries. Since it is also typically the peak of the flower season, flower shows and festivals are common.
(2) Meteora was breathtaking. I highly recommend visiting the mainland of Greece if you have the opportunity.
(3) Food. People. Culture. Everyone was extremely friendly and the food was great. We especially loved having the seafood around Chania.
(4) Homecooked meal in our AirBnB in Santorini! We wanted to enjoy our patio view, so we picked up some groceries, cooked some pasta, and enjoyed the view with a bottle of wine.
(5) Handmade soaps and raki in Chania. And lots of girlfriend bonding over alcohol. 🙂
Trip Lowlights
(1) May 1 is International’s Workers Day. Do not travel on May 1 (i.e. plan on taking public transportation on May 1). This is “Labor Day” or International’s Workers Day observed in multiple countries. In addition, especially for Greece there could be strikes on public transportation impacting travel. We learned the hard way when we found out 1.5 hrs before our ferry was scheduled to depart that the ferry was cancelled to Chania. We ended up booking a last minute stay in Santorini and rescheduled our ferry to the following day. This required a lot of last minute rearranging of our itinerary which was not fun!
(2) Realizing relying on public transportation to Fira from Athinios Port in Santorini was probably not a good idea after taking Blue Star Ferries. There were thousands of people getting off the ferry.
(3) Donkey Poop. On the walk from Fira to the old Athinios Port (approximately 3Km), we did not realize the steps leading down to the port would have a lot of donkeys and donkey poop. It wasn’t bad walking down, but we did have to watch our step pretty carefully as the place was like a landmine.
(4) Power Outage. During our stay in Oia (Santorini), there was a “scheduled” power outage from the morning till afternoon on one of the days we were staying there. It didn’t stop us from enjoying the day, though some of the shops were closed due to the power outage. The power was back on by 2pm.
(5) It can be a little crowded in Santorini. Especially in Oia and the places that are heavily photographed or “Instagrammed”.
