Greek Spotlight - Small Group

You'll arrive in Athens and find antiquity threaded through the city: marble columns beyond cafe tables, temple ruins beside narrow streets and the Acropolis high above the rooftops. After checking in, you can explore the streets at your own pace, perhaps turning into Plaka where pedestrian lanes curl past neoclassical façades and bougainvillea tumbles from balconies. You might catch the roasted scent of Greek coffee from a kafenion or pick up a sesame-crusted koulouri from a bakery. Later, meet your Travel Director and fellow travelers, ready to begin twelve days together in Greece.

With your Local Specialist beside you, you'll make the climb to the Acropolis, the Parthenon waiting at the summit in pale marble as Athens stretches far below. From there, you'll move through the city’s great classical landmarks, following the long curve of the Panathenaic Stadium, passing the surviving columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus and slipping beneath the clean stone lines of Hadrian’s Arch. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, pause as the Evzones perform their ceremonial change, the hard strike of nail-studded tsarouchia sounding across the paving while white pleats sway and red caps flash against the stone. At Vryssaki Art Cafe, settle into the terrace for something sweet, with the Acropolis framed above the rooftops. Then leave Athens behind and peer down into the Corinth Canal, its narrow ribbon of water cut deep between sheer rock walls. In Nafplio, the evening is yours. Perhaps choose an Optional Experience to look up towards Palamidi Castle, out across the harbor to Bourtzi Fortress and towards the Sleeping Lion carved into the rock before sharing dinner at a family-run local restaurant.

At Mycenae, you’ll follow your Local Specialist through the remains of a Bronze Age kingdom, past royal tombs and immense walls built from blocks of rock so large the ancient Greeks believed giants had moved them. Here, tales of kings, power and betrayal belong to a place you can walk through for yourself. In Stemnitsa, swap royal dynasties for the low hum of thousands of bees at Axion Esti, a family-run organic beekeeping facility. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience introduces you to Sophia and Anthony before you pull on beekeeper gear and move closer to the working hives. Listen to the colony at work, explore the beekeeping museum and taste honey at the source, its sweetness lingering as you learn just how much these tiny pollinators do for the ecosystems around them. Lunch is yours to choose in Mycenae before continuing into the mountains towards Delphi, where you can settle in and spend the evening however you want.

Along Delphi’s Sacred Way, you'll climb with your Local Specialist towards the Temple of Apollo, the path winding higher across the hillside with the vast olive groves of Amfissa spread out below. This was the road to the Oracle, once trod by Alexander the Great before setting outo to conquer the known world. As you continue through the sanctuary with your Local Specialist, you’ll hear how athletes once competed here alongside musicians and poets in the Pythian Games, all in honor of Apollo. Perhaps choose an Optional Experience and take your seat for a hosted lunch at a local restaurant, passing plates across the table before continuing north. At Thermopylae, beneath the slopes of Mount Kallidromos, you’ll look across the broad plain that today covers what was once a narrow passage between mountain and sea, held by King Leonidas and his Spartans. Then continue through central Greece to Kalambaka for dinner at your hotel.

At Meteora, you’ll travel with your Local Specialist into a landscape of sheer sandstone pillars, with monasteries set so high above Kalambaka that stone and sky seem stitched together. Visit one of these 14th-century retreats and move through its stone-built spaces, then look back towards Kalambaka from a height monks once reached only by rope and ladder. Hear how people and provisions were hauled up the rock face, suspended between the ground below and the monastery above. Later, return to Athens with the rest of the day free to spend your way. This evening, perhaps choose an Optional Experience and gather at a taverna with your new friends, where traditional Greek dishes and drinks pass around the table and you might find yourself on the dance floor before the night is over.

Today, you’ll say goodbye to your Travel Director and fellow travelers as your six-day journey through Greece comes to an end.