• 11 Breakfast (B)
• 5 Dinner (D)
• 2 Lunch (L)

• Athens: Visit the Acropolis Museum with your Local Expert to examine sculptures and architectural fragments from the Parthenon and other Acropolis buildings. The top-floor gallery aligns with the Parthenon’s orientation, allowing you to view surviving frieze sections in their original sequence.
• Vergina: Visit the Royal Tombs at Vergina with your Local Expert and see the tomb traditionally identified as Philip II’s. You’ll learn how the discovery of the burial complex reshaped understanding of Macedonian royal history and funerary practice.
• Nafplion: Meet an expert sommelier at a Nemea winery and learn about the evolution of Greek wine making, dating back to antiquity. After touring the winery, sample some of the delicious and elegant Greek wines, expertly paired with piquant local cheeses and tasty cured meats.

• Nafplion: Stop at a local olive grove to learn the steps from harvest to pressing, including how timing and temperature affect flavour. You’ll taste olive oil and learn how producers assess fruitiness, bitterness and peppery finish as markers of freshness and quality.

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

Insight Vacations

• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star stays

Walk the Acropolis with a Local Expert, examining the Parthenon’s Doric columns, the Caryatids of the Erechtheion and the monumental Propylaea gateway. From this limestone height, see how the ancient citadel still defines Athens’ skyline.

Discover how its fifth-century BC buildings expressed Athenian religious devotion, political ambition and architectural precision. The surviving temples make the city’s classical history tangible in the setting for which they were designed.

Explore the Acropolis Museum with a Local Expert to examine sculptures and architectural fragments recovered from Athens’ ancient citadel. See Parthenon frieze panels and finds from other Acropolis buildings at close range.

In the gallery aligned with the Parthenon, surviving sections of the frieze are displayed in their original sequence. The museum connects the artistry of individual carvings with the temples visible on the hill above.

Discover Athens with a Local Expert, passing Hadrian’s Arch and the Temple of Olympian Zeus to trace the city’s Roman-era expansion. View the marble Panathenaic Stadium, reconstructed for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

See Parliament and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Syntagma Square, alongside the neoclassical buildings known as the Trilogy of Athens. Together, these landmarks reveal a capital shaped by ancient, Roman and modern Greek history.

Meet your Travel Director and fellow small-group travellers over dinner at a local Athens restaurant. Taste Greek dishes shaped by seasonal produce, olive oil, grains and coastal ingredients, with wines drawn from the country’s native grape varieties.

The shared meal offers an introduction to the regional food traditions explored throughout mainland Greece. Conversation around the table brings the group together in the lively setting of the capital.

Visit the monument to King Leonidas near Thermopylae, where a Greek force resisted the Persian army of Xerxes I in 480 BC. Consider how the narrow pass shaped the defenders’ strategy and delayed the advance into mainland Greece.

The modern statue commemorates the Spartan-led defence, while the surrounding landscape gives the battle a physical setting. Changes to the coastline over centuries make the site an opportunity to explore the difference between ancient and present-day terrain.

Explore Ancient Dion with a Local Expert at the foot of Mount Olympus. Walk through an archaeological park containing sanctuaries, theatres and Roman-era villas in a city that served as a sacred centre for the ancient Macedonians.

Dion’s setting links its religious monuments to the mountain associated with the Greek gods. Its remains also show how the settlement developed across different periods, from Macedonian worship to life under Roman rule.

Choose a guided introduction to Thessaloniki with a Local Expert, exploring central districts shaped by Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman rule. Follow city streets past historic landmarks before reaching the Upper Town.

From Ano Poli, take in views across the harbour and Thermaic Gulf while learning how successive communities shaped this northern Greek port. This is one of two included Insight Choice activities in Thessaloniki; travellers select it instead of the guided food walk.

Choose a guided food walk through Thessaloniki with your Travel Director, visiting central markets and bakeries. Taste sesame koulouri rings, local cheeses, cured meats and bougatsa pastry while observing the rhythms of the city’s everyday food culture.

The flavours reflect Thessaloniki’s long-standing links with Balkan, Anatolian and Mediterranean communities. This is one of two included Insight Choice activities in the city; travellers select it instead of the historic-centre tour.

Visit the Royal Tombs at Vergina with a Local Expert, including the burial traditionally identified as that of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. Explore the Museum of Aigai to view finds from the royal cemetery and palace site.

Gold grave goods, weapons, jewellery and painted tomb elements illuminate Macedonian royal life and funerary practice. The discoveries at ancient Aigai transformed historians’ understanding of the kingdom that rose to prominence in the fourth century BC.

Spend time in Metsovo, a Pindus Mountains town known for steep lanes, stone-built houses and carved timber balconies. Its highland setting and small churches reflect a community with a long Vlach heritage.

Metsovo prospered through trade across the passes linking Epirus and Thessaly. Browse its streets at your own pace and notice the local cheese-making tradition, including smoked Metsovone; visits to particular museums, shops or wineries are not specified as included.

Walk within Ioannina’s castle walls, where mosques, Byzantine churches and stone houses speak to the city’s layered history. From the lakeside promenade, board a small boat across Lake Pamvotis to the inhabited Island of Ioannina.

Explore the island’s lanes independently, among churches and monastic sites associated with the Ottoman era and Ali Pasha. The crossing offers a different perspective on this Epirus city and its long connection to lake life and regional trade.

Explore Nafpaktos’ enclosed Venetian harbour and the defensive walls rising towards its hilltop castle. See waterfront reminders of the Battle of Lepanto, including memorial inscriptions and a statue of Miguel de Cervantes, who fought in the 1571 naval clash.

The port’s position near the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth explains its strategic importance. Its surviving fortifications make the relationship between maritime trade, defence and the battle’s geographic setting easy to grasp.

Follow the Sacred Way at Delphi with a Local Expert, passing the Treasury of the Athenians and the precisely fitted stones of the Polygonal Wall. Climb the sanctuary’s slope towards the Temple of Apollo beneath Mount Parnassus.

For centuries, visitors from across the Greek world came to consult the oracle on matters of public and private importance. The hillside setting and surviving monuments show how faith, politics and offerings converged at this ancient sanctuary.

Make savoury Greek pies with a local chef in Delphi, working with thin pastry and fillings such as seasonal vegetables, herbs and local cheeses. Sit down with your small group to taste the pies fresh from the oven as part of lunch.

These pies have long been a staple of village kitchens in mountainous Central Greece, where adaptable recipes make use of available produce. The hands-on class offers a practical introduction to a regional cooking tradition.

Visit a Nemea winery and meet an expert sommelier to learn about Greek winemaking traditions. Enjoy a light lunch and taste wines made from Agiorgitiko, comparing styles influenced by vineyard location and ageing.

Local cheeses and cured meats provide a regional pairing for the wines. Nemea is one of Greece’s leading red-wine areas, and the tasting reveals the range that producers can draw from its signature grape.

Meet a family of organic beekeepers in Arcadia and learn how they care for their hives. Put on a beekeeper’s suit to observe the bees at work, followed by a guided tasting of Greek honey.

Three generations of the family have tended bees, making this a personal introduction to the relationship between pollinators, agriculture and biodiversity. The visit supports their conservation-focused work and the United Nations goal of protecting life on land.

Walk Nafplion’s old town with your Travel Director, taking in neoclassical buildings and waterfront promenades beneath the imposing Palamidi fortress. Look towards the Bourtzi sea tower standing in the harbour.

Nafplion served as Greece’s first capital after independence, and its public buildings recall that formative period. The orientation brings together the town’s political history, fortified setting and coastal character in a compact, walkable centre.

Enter Mycenae through the Lion Gate with a Local Expert and explore the citadel’s massive Cyclopean walls. Visit tholos, or ‘beehive’, tombs associated with elite burials at this major centre of Late Bronze Age Greece.

The site offers insight into Mycenaean power, trade and kingship during the late second millennium BC. Its monumental entrance and stonework reveal the scale of a fortified community whose history continues to shape accounts of ancient Greece.

Visit the ancient theatre at Epidaurus, celebrated for its clear sightlines and acoustics. See how its tiers of stone seating fit into the landscape of a sanctuary dedicated to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing.

Built in the fourth century BC, the theatre was part of a wider sacred complex rather than a standalone performance venue. Its surviving form offers a direct impression of how architecture and public gathering came together in classical Greece.

Visit a local olive grove near Nafplion to follow the journey from harvest to pressing. Learn how the timing of picking and the temperature of extraction can influence an oil’s flavour.

Taste olive oil and consider the fruitiness, bitterness and peppery finish producers use to assess freshness and quality. The visit connects a familiar Greek ingredient to the cultivation and practical decisions behind every bottle.

View the Corinth Canal from a crossing point, looking down between steep limestone walls to the narrow waterway cut through the Isthmus of Corinth. The channel runs for approximately 6.3 kilometres.

Opened in 1893, the canal created a passage between the Aegean and Ionian seas, avoiding the much longer route around the Peloponnese. Its confined proportions make the ambition of this engineering project particularly clear from above.

Choose an optional dinner in Psiri, a central Athens neighbourhood known for its dining streets and evening atmosphere. Share a meal in a setting where contemporary city life sits alongside older workshops and closely packed lanes.

This experience offers another way to encounter Athens through its food and neighbourhood character. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour; the itinerary does not specify a set menu or particular restaurant.