• 12 Dinner (D)
• 14 Breakfast (B)
• 6 Lunch (L)

• Hand sanitizer is freely available on board for you to use throughout the day.

• Olympia: Join a local chef who will share their passion for local ingredients and high-quality products. Learn how to make tzatziki and other regional dishes during a fun and immersive cooking demonstration.

Insight Vacations

• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star hotel and overnight cruise stays
• Business class coach with extended leg room, and cruise travel

Meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers over a welcome dinner in Athens. Share a table as the group gathers in the Greek capital, with its lively dining culture and long tradition of meals enjoyed together.

The dinner offers a relaxed introduction to the people you will travel with. It is an organised evening experience, distinct from the routine meals included elsewhere on the tour.

Explore ancient Athens with a Local Expert on this choice of included sightseeing experiences. Visit the Temple of Olympian Zeus and Arch of Hadrian before ascending the Acropolis to see the Parthenon and the Temple of Athena Nike.

Examine the Caryatids of the Erechtheion and take in views across the modern city. These monuments reveal how Athens expressed civic pride, religious devotion and architectural ambition over many centuries.

Walk through Plaka with your Travel Director on this alternative included Athens experience. Explore the narrow streets of the neighbourhood beneath the Acropolis, looking out for historic corners among its small squares, shops and traditional cafés.

Known as the Neighbourhood of the Gods, Plaka brings everyday Athenian life into close contact with the ancient city. The guided walk gives you a sense of its character, with time to explore the pedestrian streets around Adrianou independently.

View the monument to King Leonidas near the site of the Battle of Thermopylae. The memorial marks the Spartan-led stand against the Persian army of Xerxes I in 480 BC, one of the most widely remembered episodes of ancient Greek history.

Consider the importance of the narrow mountain pass: its terrain helped a smaller Greek force delay the Persian advance. The visit connects a familiar story of courage with the landscape in which it unfolded.

Get to know Kalambaka with your Travel Director during an orientation of the town at the foot of Meteora. Look up from its streets to the immense rock pillars that dominate the skyline and give this part of central Greece its distinctive setting.

The orientation places the town in the context of the Meteora landscape, where monasteries were built high above the plain. It is a useful introduction to the relationship between the local community and the remarkable formations beside it.

Visit a Meteora monastery with a Local Expert, ascending into a landscape of sheer rock towers above the Peneios Valley. Explore one of the centuries-old religious communities built on these seemingly inaccessible pinnacles and enjoy views across the surrounding plain.

Meteora is a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose name evokes its monasteries’ lofty setting. The visit reveals how monastic life, faith and engineering came together in one of Greece’s most striking cultural landscapes.

Explore Delphi with a Local Expert, following the Sacred Way up the slope of Mount Parnassus. Pass the Treasury of the Athenians and the carefully fitted Polygonal Wall as you approach the Temple of Apollo.

Here, visitors from across the ancient Greek world sought guidance from the oracle. Walking through the sanctuary shows how its setting, monuments and religious influence made Delphi a place of exceptional importance for centuries.

Explore ancient Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic Games, and see the remains of the Temple of Zeus and the athletes’ gymnasium. Enter the ancient stadium, where stone markers still identify the sprint course, and pause for a photograph at the starting line.

First held in 776 BC, the games were part of a religious festival honouring Zeus. The site also hosted the Heraia, women’s games honouring Hera, adding another dimension to its athletic history.

Join a local chef for a cooking demonstration in Olympia, learning how ingredients and straightforward techniques shape regional Greek dishes. Watch the preparation of tzatziki and other specialties before tasting the flavours presented at dinner.

The experience puts local ingredients and Greek food traditions at the centre of the evening. More than a standard restaurant meal, it offers a chance to hear a chef’s perspective on the dishes served and the products used to make them.

Explore Mycenae with a Local Expert, entering the ruined citadel through the Lion Gate. Walk beside its massive Cyclopean walls and visit the beehive-shaped tholos tombs associated with this powerful Late Bronze Age centre.

Mycenae lends its name to the Mycenaean civilisation, whose networks extended across the eastern Mediterranean. The surviving stonework and burial places offer tangible clues to its society, craftsmanship and ideas of kingship.

Discover Nafplio with your Travel Director, taking in its neoclassical buildings and waterfront setting beneath Palamidi fortress. Visit the atelier of artisan Maria Gonidou, where she and her daughter Nefeli share traditional Greek weaving techniques through a live loom demonstration.

Nafplio served as Greece’s first capital after independence. In its family-run studio, the town’s heritage takes a more personal form: handmade textiles and skills passed between generations. The visit supports the continued practice of this local craft.

View the Corinth Canal from a crossing point and look down between its steep limestone walls to the narrow waterway below. The cut passes through the Isthmus of Corinth, separating the Peloponnese from mainland Greece.

Opened in 1893, the 6.3-kilometre canal links the Aegean and Ionian seas, avoiding the much longer voyage around the peninsula. Seeing its scale from above makes the ambition of this engineering project immediately clear.

Share a Greek-style dinner in Athens as the land-based portion of the journey draws to a close. Gather around the table for a social evening centred on the generous, communal approach to dining that is characteristic of Greece.

The experience is an opportunity to enjoy Greek hospitality with fellow travellers and reflect on the places explored across the mainland. It is a hosted dining occasion rather than an unstructured evening meal.

Cruise the Aegean Sea aboard an overnight ship, travelling between the Turkish coast and Greek islands including Crete, Santorini, Mykonos and Milos. Watch changing coastlines from the water while using the ship as a base for island visits and included shore sightseeing.

This sea journey connects places shaped by centuries of Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange. Onboard dining is included, with breakfast, lunch and dinner served daily during the cruise and a selection of non-alcoholic drinks available with meals.

Walk through Ephesus with a Local Expert from the Turkish port of Kusadasi. Follow the Arcadian Way into the Roman city, stand before the ornate Library of Celsus and take in the scale of its theatre.

The wider experience includes the House of the Virgin Mary, set in the hills above the ruins. Together, these places show Ephesus as both a major centre of Roman urban life and a landscape associated with later Christian tradition.

Visit the Palace of Knossos near Heraklion, exploring the remains of the complex associated with Minoan civilisation. See its northern entrance and restored frescoes depicting figures, animals and ceremonial scenes.

The palace is closely linked to the myth of King Minos and the Minotaur, but its rooms and artwork also offer insight into a real Bronze Age society. Knossos reveals a Cretan culture that flourished long before classical Greece.

Explore Thira, Santorini’s capital, where streets, cafés and restaurants sit high above the Aegean. Take in views across the island’s crescent-shaped caldera and the steep cliffs that give the town its dramatic position.

Santorini’s landscape was shaped by volcanic activity, and Thira’s clifftop setting makes that history visible at a glance. Time in the capital lets you experience its lively atmosphere while appreciating the relationship between the whitewashed town and the sea below.

Explore Philerimos with a Local Expert on this optional Rhodes excursion. Visit the hilltop medieval monastery, follow the mosaic-lined Golgotha path and see the 15th-century Church of St George Hostos.

The hill brings together religious heritage and an elevated setting away from Rhodes’ waterfront. Its paths and historic buildings offer a different perspective on the island’s past. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Travel to Lindos on an optional scenic excursion across Rhodes. Ascend to its Acropolis to see the remains of the Doric Temple of Athena Lindia and look out over the village and St Paul’s Bay.

The hilltop sanctuary reflects centuries of worship in a place whose coastal position is as striking as its archaeology. The climb rewards visitors with broad views of the surrounding shoreline. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Visit Oia on an optional Santorini excursion and explore the village’s lanes of whitewashed houses and blue-domed churches. Its position along the caldera rim offers expansive views of the sea and volcanic landscape.

Oia is particularly known for sunset views over the Aegean, when changing light brings out the contours of the cliffs and buildings. This excursion offers a village setting distinct from Santorini’s capital. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Visit the Temple of Poseidon on an optional excursion to Cape Sounion, south of Athens. See the ancient columns standing above the sea and take in the headland’s wide coastal views.

Dedicated to the Greek god of the sea, the sanctuary occupies a position that would have been conspicuous to sailors approaching Attica. Its surviving architecture and exposed setting give the visit a strong sense of place. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.