A Family Adventure in Greece

Long-time clients Alicia & Jay came to us for some help with a bucket-list trip to Greece with her mom, dad, sister, and brother-in-law. The whole family wanted a mix of sightseeing, relaxation, luxury hotel amenities, gorgeous beaches, and incredible food! We were thrilled to put it all together for them. Here’s their feedback:


We can’t thank you enough for planning such a perfect family trip to Greece! We had an amazing time! We had beautiful, warm, and sunny weather for most of the trip.

Athens

As you already know, when we arrived in Athens on Saturday morning, there was a mixup with our transportation and we ended up just taking taxis to the hotel. However, after this, the trip was mostly seamless! The Athens Gate Hotel was wonderful and very helpful in confirming our transportation for the following day. When we arrived on Saturday, we had lunch and explored Hadrian’s Arch and Monastiraki Square. We had drinks and dinner at the Athens Gate rooftop, which had beautiful views of the Acropolis.

On Sunday, we had our tour of the Acropolis. When we got to the meeting point, there was no one there to meet us for the tour. We contacted the tour company and they arranged for someone to meet us back at our hotel so we could leave from there. The tour of the Acropolis was amazing and our tour guide was incredible. It was definitely good to do it early in the day because it was 90+ degrees, and it wasn’t too crowded as we were climbing up, but on our way down we noticed that the crowds had increased significantly.

After the tour, we grabbed lunch and headed to the airport.

Crete

We absolutely loved the Minoa Palace Resort in Crete! What a beautiful resort, which certainly earns its 5-star status.

We spent the next four days mostly between the beach and pools and walking to nearby restaurants for dinner. The hotel staff couldn’t have been nicer, arranging taxis and even salon appointments for us. We loved our rooms with the private pools!

The Cretan Cooking Class was an incredible experience and one of the best meals we had the entire trip. It was amazing to see the family’s villa high up in the mountains with incredible views.

We also explored Chania Old Town on Wednesday, which was beautiful. We stopped for lunch along the water at the perfect time because the skies opened up and gave us quite a storm. I think that was the only time it rained the entire trip in Greece!

Santorini

I think Santorini was collectively our favorite place! The Petit Palace Hotel blew us away with its incredible views. Talk about a grand entrance – the hotel’s entrance is literally two doors on the side of a cliff and all you see is the water below when you walk through. Our rooms were again spacious and impressive – from the unique bathrooms to the balconies. We saw the best sunset of our entire trip from our hotel room balconies. The hotel had a shuttle that runs back and forth to Fira, and the staff was very helpful with arranging taxis for us elsewhere.

We spent time exploring both Fira and Oia, which was my favorite place, as well as the black sand beaches – we spent a day at one of the beach clubs called Wet Stories. Marissa, Joe, and Bob did a hike from Fira to Imerovigli, which they said was amazing! We also did a tour and wine tasting at Santo Wines, which was great!

The highlight in Santorini for all of us was the Sunset Boat Tour. The tour ended up being all adults and relatively small (we lucked out with a fun group). The crew was spectacular and the food they prepared was delicious. We all swam in the Aegean Sea and enjoyed drinks, good music, and beautiful views.

Conclusions

We all agreed that it was so nice to have one extra night in Athens at the end of the trip. We loved the Sofitel – the convenience of the two-minute walk from baggage claim was ideal. We had dinner at their rooftop restaurant and it was great to be able to freshen up and get a good night’s sleep before the long flight back to Boston.

Overall, you knocked it out of the park again! This was the most memorable family trip. Thank you from all of us for planning the best escape to Greece!

 

Afternoon Tea and Gyros

I am VERY late in posting this wonderful trip report from Andrea and Eric’s June “escape” to London and Greece. But in some ways the timing is just right, as the snow falls outside and we all start dreaming about summer vacation. So enjoy this little daydream of Europe. And then give me a call to start planning your trip for 2020 🙂

Hi Ann — We got back yesterday evening and both agreed that was a trip of a lifetime. It was fantastic! We’ve adjusted back to east coast time pretty quickly, but getting on Europe’s time required some effort. 

Greece had so much to offer. Our stop in London was brief but we squeezed in quite a bit. St. James Court hotel was just a few blocks from Buckingham Palace, so any time we wandered out we got to pass by and appreciate the view. We booked an afternoon tea time at One Aldwych Hotel. The tea party theme was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was so well done. We then did an afternoon ride on a hop-on-and-off bus tour. Unfortunately, Big Ben was covered in scaffolding and the tour guide said it’ll be under construction for the next few years. 

In Athens we had our skip the line walking tour you booked us for the Acropolis and the museum. It was really interesting and helped us appreciate the history much more than I was expecting. Our hotel was centrally located in Athens and fairly basic but nice. Everything was walkable and we had a great view of the Acropolis from our hotel.  

A perfect trip combo- Greece & London! Oh the sites you can see and the things you can do! Here's a potential itinerary

Mykonos was our next stop and was our favorite! The Myconian Utopia Resort was so well kept and so impressive. Words can’t describe this place. The views, the infinity pool, the service, and private beach were all fantastic. We’d love to visit there again someday. Our days here were spent either on the resort or the private beach (we even jet skied), not much else was easy to travel to with our limited number of days there. But that was perfectly okay by us.

 

infinity pool in Santorini Greece

We then got to Santorini by ferry and we were unsure on that process, but it was pretty easy. Our transfers to and from the ferry didn’t work out. The pickup car in Santorini didn’t show, so we ended up having to take a shuttle to the hotel. The hotel views of the caldera were so amazing it’s hard to describe. Our hotel, Chromata, was literally on the cliff! The town of Imerovigli, where our hotel was, was great since there’s so much there. There are little markets, rental car shops, and plenty of places to eat so we felt less bound by the hotel than we did in Mykonos. Our room itself was pretty basic, but the view was fantastic. They were completely booked so they didn’t have any available upgrades.

The hotel service was amazing. We took a semi-private sunset luxury boat tour through Volcano Yachting. We booked it very last minute – the night before. It’s the best thing we could have done in Santorini. It traveled through the caldera and stopped at the red beach for swimming, stopped at the volcanic island for us to swim in the hot springs, and included free drinks and dinner. The sunset was unbelievable. They even picked us up and dropped us off at the hotel. The next day we rented a tiny smart car and drove to the black beach. It’s actually black and pretty cool. But since the sand is black is extremely hot to walk on. I wish I brought my water shoes. Flip flops weren’t enough!

View of Santorini Greece on the cliff
a beautiful balcony overlooking the sea

Our trip came to an end and we had a very long day traveling back (Santorini to Athens, Athens to London, then London to Dulles). We were extremely lucky that we made it to London a few minutes early, we knew there was a United flight from London to DC at 12:15pm and thought just maybe we could get lucky and get on that flight instead of our 4:40pm flight. We stopped at the United desk, they called the gate, and they let us onto the 12:15pm even though they already finished boarding everyone. This was the moment having no checked bags really paid off! Ha. So glad because we got home 5 hours earlier than expected.

By the way, we ate a lot of gyros – all were great! Oh, and I attached a few pictures from our trip! We have hundreds on our phones need to sort through still 🙂

 

the view from the stair of Santorini

Thank you again for being so available and helpful with this entire process. Booking this trip on our own just seems so daunting and I’m glad we avoided the black hole of reading hotel, tour, and other reviews online. Made our lives much easier. Thanks again!

 Andrea & Eric

You provided excellent guidance for us. I appreciated that you really had us think about what was most important to us when we were selecting the right cruise – and not to totally focus on what other people had to say. THANK YOU for helping to make this a memorable trip for our family! It really was a trip of a lifetime!

Clare and Mark (family cruise to Alaska)

The level of service we experienced was out of this world (and we did NOT make it easy on Ann). We weren’t quite sure where we wanted to go, when we would be able to go, or what “vibe” we were going for. After asking us some key questions (what we liked, didn’t like, why, etc.) Ann helped us narrow down our trip details and planned the honeymoon of our dreams. She helped book some of our excursions, answered some emergency questions while abroad and was always available/willing to help. I think it’s safe to say we won’t be using anyone else for future travel planning – Ann is a rockstar!

Carli (Italy and Spain)