Two thousand Greek tours. These are the ones that hold up.
Which Balos boat leaves before the wind gets up. Whether the Acropolis combo pass pays for itself. What a Symi speedboat costs against the slow ferry. Verdicts on the tours you can actually book, with the prices attached.
The five that settle an argument about what to do in Greece.
A ticket, a boat, a sunset, a rock and a fast crossing. Five bookings that between them cover the mainland, Crete and the Dodecanese, and what each one actually costs.
01The ticketAcropolis & up to 5 Archaeological Sites Combo PassOne pass, the Acropolis and five more sites. It pays back on the third site, so it is a three-day decision rather than a morning one.
02The Crete boatFrom Kissamos Port: Boat Cruise to Balos Lagoon & GramvousaKissamos port to the Balos shallows and the fort at Gramvousa. Take an early sailing: the afternoon wind puts a chop on the crossing.
03The cheap hourCape Sounion & Poseidon Temple Sunset Half-Day TripThe coast road to the Temple of Poseidon, timed to land at sunset. Under twenty-five dollars, and still the best-value evening out of Athens.
04The rock dayMeteora Monasteries Day Trip with Caves and LunchMonasteries on sandstone pillars, four hours north and back in a day. Each house keeps a different closing day, which the good operators plan around.
05The crossingSpeedboat Trip to Symi with Free Time to ExploreRhodes to Symi by speedboat instead of the slow ferry, which buys back two hours in the harbour at the far end.
More of this country is reached by boat than by road.
Four kinds of day afloat, and they are not interchangeable. A cave run is two hours and a swim; a sailing day is lunch, shade and a ladder. Here is what each one costs before you pick a port.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · From the Port of Kos: Full Day Boat Cruise to 3 Islands
A day under sailShade, a ladder off the stern, lunch off the grill.
The sunset sailingGolden hour from the water instead of from a queue.
The cave runShort, cheap, and best in the first half of the day.
Mask and finsShallow reefs and wrecks, gear handed over at the jetty.
All 472 boat days, port by port →
Pick where you sleep and the day trips pick themselves.
The city under the rock, a caldera rim, two hundred and sixty kilometres of Crete, a crusader town in the Dodecanese, and two Ionian islands that live off their own coastline. What each one is worth booking for.
Four sites carry most of the ancient itinerary.
Every ancient site →
The rock in Athens, the oracle at Delphi, a Bronze Age palace outside Heraklion and the monasteries above the Thessalian plain. They are spread across three days of driving, which is the real planning problem. Below: the best-reviewed way into each.
Crete is four bases, not one, and the drive between them is the trip.
Chania in the west for the gorge and the pink sand, Rethymno in the middle for the quad tracks, Heraklion for Knossos and the wine country, Agios Nikolaos in the east for Spinalonga. Book the day out from the town you are sleeping in; nobody enjoys the three-hour transfer.
- 1Full-Day Samaria Gorge Trek Excursion & Guidefrom $41
- 2Knossos Palace Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guidefrom $30
- 3Half-Day Quad Bike Safarifrom $70
The tours the most travellers come back from happy.
Every Greek tour we have weighed up →Nine products carry more bookings than anything else on the site. What each one gets right, and what it costs to join it.
1
Acropolis & up to 5 Archaeological Sites Combo Pass
Visit the Acropolis at a reserved time, then use the app to explore up to five Athens sites within three days. Audio tours cover the Parthenon, Acropolis, Plaka, and Ancient Agora, with an optional English guide. The pass includes the Ancient Agora, Roman Agora, Olympieion, Aristotle’s School, and Panathenaic Stadium, depending on your choice.
From · $48
Read our verdict →
2
Acropolis Ticket with Optional Audio or Live Guide
3
Cape Sounion & Poseidon Temple Sunset Half-Day Trip
from $23
4
From Kissamos Port: Boat Cruise to Balos Lagoon & Gramvousa
from $47
5
Acropolis and Parthenon Guided Walking Tour
from $38
6
From the Port of Kos: Full Day Boat Cruise to 3 Islands
from $35
7
Athens, Piraeus, and Coastline: Blue Hop-On Hop-Off Bus
from $14
8
Greek Food Walking Tour in Athens
from $87
9
Cape Sounio & Poseidon Temple Trip with Audio Guide
from $23
What a Greek day out costs, band by band.
Every tour on the site sorted by price. The gap between a good cheap morning and an expensive one is smaller here than almost anywhere in the Mediterranean.
Site entry, old-town walks, the cave runs and the short crossings between islands.
Full days: the Balos boat, a sailing day with lunch, Meteora and Delphi by coach.
Private guides, chartered decks and the one booking a trip gets built around.
The limestone does something to the light here.
Zakynthos undercuts into arches that throw the sun back up through the water. Antipaxos runs to sand you would put in a brochure. Kos and Milos hide the caves behind cliffs you cannot walk to. All of it is a boat problem, and all of it is cheaper than it looks.
Three Greek days with no equivalent anywhere.
Ruins, beaches and boat trips are Mediterranean furniture. A gorge you walk downhill for six hours, a palace with plumbing older than the alphabet, and an island nobody has been allowed to sleep on for a century are not.
The Samaria Gorge
The walk starts at Xyloskalo at twelve hundred metres and ends at a beach on the Libyan Sea, and the only way out of the far end is the boat to Sougia or Chora Sfakion. It takes five to seven hours, it is stone underfoot the whole way, and the gates shut from roughly November to April. Every guided version is really a transport package with a walk in the middle, which is exactly what it should be.
- 1Full-Day Samaria Gorge Trek Excursion & Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,191 reviews
- 2Samaria Gorge Full-Day Trek, Pickup & Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,610 reviews
- 3From Chania/Rethymno: Samariá Gorge Guided Hike with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,010 reviews
Knossos
Arthur Evans poured concrete into the ruins a century ago and painted the columns back in, which archaeologists have argued about ever since. What it gives a visitor is a building you can read: light wells, drainage, storerooms still holding jars. Without a guide it is a field of restored concrete. With one it is a four-thousand-year-old city, and the Heraklion museum an hour later is where the real frescoes live.
- 1Knossos Palace Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 3.9 · 2,251 reviews
- 2Palace of Knossos E-Ticket and Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 3.8 · 1,540 reviews
- 3Knossos: Knossos Palace Skip-the-Line Guided Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,380 reviews
Delos
Nobody is allowed to stay the night on Delos, and nobody has been since antiquity made it a holy place. Boats run from Mykonos to a fixed timetable and the last one back is the last one. What waits there is a whole Hellenistic town, mosaics and all, standing in the open with no modern village built over the top of it. Take a hat: there is no shade on the site at all.
- 1Shared Mykonos Sail Cruise to Delos and Rhenia Islands★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 705 reviews
- 2Mykonos Sail Cruise to Rhenia, Guided Tour of Delos, Lunch&Drinks★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 608 reviews
- 3Half-Day Delos Tour from Mykonos★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 582 reviews
Four Greek bookings that run out before you land.
Most of a Greek holiday can be arranged the night before over dinner. These four run on seasons, timetables and boat capacity, and none of them cares when your flight gets in.
- 01Full-Day Samaria Gorge Trek Excursion & GuideThe gorge opens around May and closes with the autumn rain, and the wardens shut it on any day the riverbed looks dangerous.
- 02Shared Mykonos Sail Cruise to Delos and Rhenia IslandsThe site closes and no one sleeps there, so the whole visit is built around one boat out and one boat back.
- 03Santorini Classic Catamaran Cruise with BBQ, Drinks and TransfersA catamaran carries a dozen people, not a hundred. In August the good sailings are gone a fortnight out.
- 04From Kissamos Port: Boat Cruise to Balos Lagoon & GramvousaOne boat a day out of Kissamos in the shoulder season, and the meltemi cancels it outright when it blows hard.
The Greek day restarts when the heat comes off the stone.
Nothing outdoors is pleasant between one and five in July, and everything is pleasant again by seven. Plan the ruins for the morning, lose the afternoon on purpose, and put the money into the evening: a deck at sunset, a rooftop table, a cellar with the lights low.
By base — mainland, Crete, the islands
Athens, west Crete, then east to Rhodes: fourteen days without a wasted transfer.
Delphi
KosThe reviews that went up this week.
Everything added since Monday →
Acropolis of Athens, Parthenon and Acropolis Museum private tour with dinner
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Hydra Private Day Trip by Ferry from Athens with Transfers
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Private Athens Transfer Airport/Port -Greek Tours-Hourly service
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VIP Private Guided Tour of Athens Acropolis & Plaka in a Sidecar
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VIP Day Cruise from Athens to Hydra, Poros and Aegina
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Meteora 2-Day Tour Sunset & Morning Small Group + Hotel
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Athens Moonlight Waling Tour with Drinks and Meze Dishes
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Departure Transfer from Athens City to Athens Airport
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The Apostle Paul’s Missionary Journey in Athens and Corinth
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Classic Athens Food Tour with Local Drink & Market Visit
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