Greece

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Athens, Without the Rookie Mistakes We landed in Athens at 2pm in late July, dropped our bags, and marched straight up to the Acropolis. By the time we reached the Parthenon the marble was throwing back heat like an oven, the queue snaked into full sun, and we spent more on water than on the tickets. A taverna owner that evening just laughed: “Tourists do this every summer. Go at eight in the morning, or at six in the evening. Never at noon, never in August.” The next morning we went at opening, had the Caryatids half to ourselves, and finally understood the city. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Cheap Flights from Berlin to Heraklion, Crete — From Around €39 I almost rebooked when I saw the September fare: €47 return. Both ways. Not each way — the whole return, taxes in. I refreshed the page three times because I was certain the site had stripped a digit. It hadn’t. That’s the thing about cheap flights from Berlin to Heraklion that most people miss: the shoulder season on this route is almost embarrassingly good value, while everyone else is fighting over July seats at twice the price. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Cheapest Greek Islands to Visit — and the Ones to Skip If Budget Matters I almost didn’t go. I had priced out a week on Santorini, watched the number climb past €150 a night for a mediocre room without a caldera view, and was quietly closing the tab when a friend sent me a screenshot of a Naxos guesthouse: €45 a night, sea-facing terrace, a fifteen-minute walk from the best beach on the island. I booked it that evening. That trip cost me less than two nights would have on Santorini, and I spent seven days on an island most people fly over on their way somewhere more famous. The food was better, the beaches were emptier, and I never once felt like I was paying a premium to look at a volcano. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Crete, Without Trying to See All of It We flew into Heraklion with a two-week plan and a list long enough for a month: Knossos, every beach on the map, both ends of the island, the Samaria Gorge. By day three we were exhausted from driving and had photographed three lagoons we barely remembered. A taverna owner in a mountain village set us straight over a plate of lamb: “Crete is not a city you walk in a weekend. Pick a side. Come back for the other.” ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Mykonos, Without Overpaying for the Postcard The first time we did Mykonos, we landed in the second week of August, dropped our bags, and walked straight into a wall of heat, crowds and a wind that nearly took my hat to Turkey. By lunchtime we’d paid more for two plates by the harbour than our whole dinner cost the night we came back in late May. That second trip — quieter lanes, swimmable sea, half the prices — is the one this Mykonos travel guide is really built around. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Rhodes, Beyond the Cruise-Ship Day Trip The first time we came to Rhodes we nearly made the classic mistake: book mid-July, base ourselves in a packed resort, and “do” the Old Town in the two hours before a beach afternoon. A friend who’d summered here for years talked us out of it. “Come in September,” she said, “stay where you can actually walk into the medieval town at night, and save Lindos for the morning before the buses arrive.” She was right on every count. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Santorini, Without the Sunset Scrum We almost ruined Santorini by doing the obvious thing: queuing shoulder-to-shoulder in Oia at 7pm with two thousand other phones, all pointed at the same horizon. Then a guesthouse owner in Imerovigli told us to just turn around. The same sun, the same glowing caldera, dropped behind the cliffs from her terrace — and there were six of us, not six hundred. That one tip changed the whole trip. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Where to Stay in Athens on a Budget — and Why Most People Get It Wrong I nearly booked the wrong part of Athens entirely. It was early April, I had three nights in the city before a ferry to the islands, and every listicle was pointing me at Plaka — the old quarter, the postcard neighbourhood, the one draped in bougainvillea below the Acropolis. So I looked at the prices and quietly panicked. Then a friend who’d lived in Athens for a year told me to look one hill south, at a neighbourhood called Koukaki. Same view of the Parthenon, same fifteen-minute walk to the main sites, about €25 a night cheaper for the same quality of room. That one tip reshaped the whole trip. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Greece, in One Sentence We had the August ferries to Santorini and Naxos half-booked when a friend who’d done the same trip the year before sent a blunt message: “It was 38 degrees, the caldera path was a wall of people, and our room cost a fortune.” We almost ignored her, because August is when the office empties out. Then I priced the identical island-hop in late September and watched it come back a third cheaper, with the sea supposedly at its warmest all year. We moved the trip, swam off a near-empty Naxos beach in bathwater-warm water, and lower down I’ll admit the one ferry date we still got wrong. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why a car changes everything in Crete The guy at the Chania counter slid the form across and tapped a line near the bottom. Twenty-two euros a day, he said, and your excess drops to zero. My wife caught my eye. We already had that covered, bought online for a fraction of the price, but he didn’t know that yet, and the small Fiat Panda we’d reserved three weeks earlier for about thirty euros a day was sitting in the lot with a scratch on the rear bumper I was about to photograph. I’ll come back to that scratch, because it nearly cost us a deposit we never should have been on the hook for. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Cheap Flights from Amsterdam to Athens, Starting at 29 EUR The booking screen said €34. I read it twice. It was a grey Tuesday last November, Lena and I were hunched over a laptop at our kitchen table in Amsterdam, and a Transavia seat to Athens cost less than the two pizzas we’d ordered to celebrate finding it. Then my finger hovered over “add checked bag” — and that one box would have nearly tripled the fare. I’ll come back to that, because it’s the mistake almost everyone makes. ...