Home » Greece » Greece - June 1997

One of the things I enjoy about the rec.travel.europe newsgroup is when people take the time to post where they went on holiday, what they did, the places they stayed and how they did it. I've not done this before so if you're not interested in my trip to Greece, thanks for reading this far. The picture on the right is Jerry, Kathryn, Chris and I in front of the Parthenon in Athens. It was very hot and sunny.

Greece - June 1997

Jvi
2004-09-14 10:44:36

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I'm 53, reasonably fit (?), work at a desk most of the day and Christine is younger, very fit. We've been married 25 years. One daughter who just got her University degree in French and History. We've made about 22 trips to Europe in the past 14 years. We are not rich, we just look for very low fares and normally travel in the off season. I mention this to show that we are "seasoned" travelers but still have minor problems during our trips, as you will see. You have to adjust and make the best of it. I think Rick Steves said that. We travel using his philosophy. I use his "Back Door Bag" with the shoulder straps and Christine uses a cheap soft bag, carry on size, with a frame, pull up handle and wheels. It's about 9"x 21"x 14" with the wheels on the 14" side. She had one with the wheels on the 9" side but it tipped over too much. We each also carry a small daypack. We check the big bags and carry on the day packs.

First, some of the pre-planning financial arrangements because a lot of the questions people seem to ask is how much did it cost and how did you make the arrangements.

We had two round trip tickets on British Airways, Chicago-London-Athens and return. We also had separate round trip tickets on Olympic Airways to get to Crete, Athens-Iraklion (Crete) and return. We had prebooked a car through Hertz for the entire time in Greece and Crete. We spurged and got a "D" class car with manual transmission, 4-doors, air-conditioning and unlimited mileage. We were to meet another couple in Athens later and continue our trip together, hence the larger car. I didn't want A/C originally but was out-voted. Thank God that the majority rules! It was very hot! The car price for Greece was $387 for 9 days (it would have been $295 without A/C), guaranteed in dollars, no pre-pay, included 18% VAT and 6% airport tax. $43 per day. I did not have to give Hertz a credit card number and they confirmed the reservation ...