Coffee at Stork, Nafplio
Unlike most Greece itineraries, ours was short on island hopping and big on exploring mainland Greece. What we had in mind was as follows:
Day 1: Fly out of DFW to Houston, catch Turkish Airlines to Athens via Istanbul
Day 2: Reach Athens at 8:45 pm, take taxi arranged by apartment owner to the rental
Day 3: Explore Athens: City walk, Acropolis museum in the morning, afternoon break, return to sightsee Acropolis in the evening
Day 4: Daytrip to Delphi and surroundings
Day 5: Explore Athens, part 2: Agora, National Archaeological Museum, explore Plaka and local sites
Day 6: Daytrip to Aegina Island by ferry
Day 7: Overnight trip to Nafplio, Epidavros, Mycenae, overnight stay at Olympia
Day 8: Explore Olympia, return to Athens and pack
Day 9: Flight to Lisbon, Portugal, explore local neighborhood
Day 10: Belem and rest of Lisbon, pack
Day 11: Lisbon to Miami, Fort Lauderdale to DFW
I was very excited to try Turkish and TAP Portugal since I hadn’t flown either of these before.
We were torn between Meteora and Olympia since both require a bit of driving, Meteora more so. In the end, Missy JJ chose to skip Meteora because of the distance and time and focus instead on Olympia. We could have driven to Meteora, then Delphi, then down to Olympia and then Nafplio and back to Athens. But all that driving would mean hours on the road, staying in different towns each day and a lot of packing and unpacking. Something, we did not really wish to do this trip.
Nafplio Bay
I regretted leaving out the stone forest of Meteora but hope to visit it some day, before my knees get too weak to climb up those mountains. While the Greek islands are truly charming, we couldn’t fit them into our itinerary without making it too tiring. At the end of the day, the goal was to let the children enjoy their dream of visiting the ancient Greek sites. And we hoped to help make it a reality. The islands would just have to wait!