• 14 Breakfast (B)
• 6 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.
• Heraklion: Explore the Palace of Knossos with your Local Expert, Crete’s largest Bronze Age palace complex and traditionally linked to King Minos. You’ll walk through the Central Court and Throne Room and see reconstructed frescoes, examining how the scale, layout and surviving details reflect the administrative and ceremonial role of the site.

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

Walk the cobbled lanes of Rethymno’s old town, where Venetian facades stand alongside Ottoman domes and minarets. Pass shaded courtyards and civic buildings before viewing the harbour area, lighthouse and fortress above the waterfront.

The contrasting architectural details reflect centuries of changing rule in this Cretan port. Its compact streets make those layers easy to appreciate on foot, from Venetian-built houses to features added following the Ottoman conquest.

Visit the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, a fourth-century BC performance space celebrated for its clear sightlines and acoustics. See the tiers of stone seating set into the hillside and consider the scale of an audience gathered here.

The theatre formed part of a wider sanctuary dedicated to Asclepius, the god of healing. Its enduring design shows how performance and the sanctuary’s religious life were connected in the ancient Greek world.

Join your small group for dinner in a traditional Cretan restaurant in Chania. Share local specialities made with seasonal ingredients, typically featuring olive oil, vegetables, herbs and regional cheeses, with wine served alongside.

The meal offers a convivial taste of the island’s food culture, where straightforward preparations place fresh produce at the centre of the table. It is a hosted dining experience rather than a meal left to arrange independently.

• 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

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 and regional cooking traditions, with wines made from native grape varieties.

The shared table offers an introduction to Greek hospitality and a chance to get to know the people travelling with you. It is a relaxed, hosted start to your time in Greece.

Walk the Acropolis with a Local Expert, examining the Parthenon’s Doric columns, the Caryatids of the Erechtheion and the monumental gateway of the Propylaea. From the rocky plateau, take in views across Athens.

These buildings expressed the city’s religious devotion, political influence and architectural ambition in the fifth century BC. Your expert brings their sculptural details and original purposes into focus at one of Greece’s most significant ancient sites.

Explore the Acropolis Museum with a Local Expert to examine sculptures and architectural fragments from the monuments above Athens. See Parthenon frieze panels and finds that reveal how the sanctuary was built and adorned.

In the top-floor gallery, the display follows the orientation of the Parthenon, helping you understand where surviving sculptures belonged. The museum offers a close view of details that are difficult to appreciate on the exposed hilltop.

Discover Athens beyond the Acropolis with a Local Expert. See Hadrian’s Arch and the Temple of Olympian Zeus, view the marble Panathenaic Stadium, and pass the neoclassical buildings known as the Trilogy of Athens.

At Syntagma Square, see the Parliament Building and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The route brings together ancient Greek, Roman and modern landmarks, including the stadium reconstructed for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

Stand near the site of the Battle of Thermopylae and view the monument to King Leonidas. Learn how the narrow coastal pass shaped the defence mounted by a Spartan-led Greek force against the Persian army in 480 BC.

The modern memorial commemorates a battle whose story has endured for centuries. Seeing the landscape gives geographical context to the Greek strategy and the pass’s importance as a route into mainland Greece.

Explore Ancient Dion with a Local Expert at the foot of Mount Olympus. Walk among the remains of sanctuaries, theatres and Roman-era villas in a city that held particular religious significance for the ancient Macedonians.

Dion’s setting connects its archaeological remains to the mountain associated with the gods of Greek mythology. The mix of sacred spaces and later civic buildings reveals how the settlement developed across different periods of its history.

Choose a city tour with a Local Expert through Thessaloniki’s historic centre. Explore streets shaped by Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman rule, gaining an introduction to the cultures that made this northern Greek port a crossroads.

The experience extends to the Upper Town, where views open across the harbour and Thermaic Gulf. This is one of two included Insight Choice activities in Thessaloniki; travellers select this historic tour or the guided food walk.

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

Balkan, Anatolian and Mediterranean influences meet in Thessaloniki’s kitchens, reflecting its long history of trade and migration. This is one of two included Insight Choice activities; travellers select the food walk or a historic-centre tour.

Visit the Royal Tombs at Vergina with a Local Expert, including the burial chamber traditionally identified with Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. Explore the ancient royal centre of Aigai and its remarkable funerary remains.

At the Museum of Aigai, view finds from the cemetery and palace site, including gold grave goods, weapons, jewellery and painted tomb elements. Together, they illuminate Macedonian royal power and burial practices.

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

Explore the island’s lanes independently, with opportunities to seek out churches and monastic sites connected to the city’s Ottoman-era past and Ali Pasha. The lake crossing offers a different perspective on Ioannina’s historic waterfront.

Explore the fortified Venetian harbour of Nafpaktos on the Gulf of Corinth. See the defensive walls rising from the waterfront towards the castle and consider how this enclosed port helped control a strategically important stretch of water.

Memorials along the harbour recall the Battle of Lepanto, fought offshore in 1571. The surviving fortifications and the town’s position make the naval conflict easier to place in its geographic setting.

Follow the Sacred Way at Delphi with a Local Expert, passing the Treasury of the Athenians and the closely fitted stones of the Polygonal Wall. Climb towards the Temple of Apollo on the slopes of Mount Parnassus.

For centuries, visitors from across the Greek world sought the oracle’s counsel here. The sanctuary’s hillside setting, votive buildings and temple remains reveal the reach of a religious centre that influenced decisions far beyond Delphi.

Join a pie-making class with a local chef in Delphi. Work with thin pastry and savoury fillings such as seasonal vegetables, herbs and local cheeses, learning techniques rooted in Central Greece’s mountain cuisine.

Sit down with your small group to taste the pies fresh from the oven as part of lunch. Making this village-kitchen staple offers a hands-on introduction to the ingredients and practical traditions behind regional Greek cooking.

Visit a Nemea winery and meet an expert sommelier in one of Greece’s leading red-wine regions. Tour the winery and taste wines made from Agiorgitiko grapes, comparing styles influenced by vineyard location and ageing.

Local cheeses and cured meats accompany the tasting and light lunch. The experience connects today’s Greek winemaking with a region whose wines offer a distinct expression of the Peloponnese’s landscape and grape-growing traditions.

Meet Anthony and Sophia at their family’s organic beekeeping facility in Arcadia. Put on a beekeeper’s suit, observe the hives and learn how careful hive management supports both honey production and pollination.

Enjoy a guided honey tasting while hearing about three generations of beekeeping knowledge. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® experience supports the family’s conservation-focused work and highlights the role of pollinators in local agriculture and biodiversity.

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

Nafplion served as Greece’s first capital after independence, and its public buildings reflect that role. The orientation introduces a town where political history, Venetian-era defences and the coastal setting remain closely entwined.

Enter Mycenae through the Lion Gate with your Local Expert and walk the fortified citadel. Examine its massive Cyclopean walls and visit tholos tombs associated with the elite burials of the Late Bronze Age.

Mycenae was a powerful centre of the civilisation that dominated mainland Greece in the late second millennium BC. Its defences and burial monuments provide tangible evidence of wealth, authority and skilled construction.

Visit a local olive grove to learn how olives move from harvest to pressing. Discover how the timing of picking and conditions during production can influence the flavour of the finished oil.

Taste olive oil and learn how producers assess fruitiness, bitterness and a peppery finish as signs of freshness and quality. The visit gives practical insight into an ingredient central to cooking and agriculture throughout Greece.

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

Opened in 1893, the 6.3-kilometre canal created a direct link between the Aegean and Ionian seas, avoiding the much longer voyage around the peninsula. Its sheer sides make the scale of the engineering work especially apparent.

Join your Travel Director for an orientation walk through Heraklion. View the Koules fortress at the harbour, the Venetian Loggia and Morosini Fountain, and pass Agios Titos and the Cathedral of Agios Minas.

The former Monastery of St. Catherine adds another layer to a city shaped by successive rulers. Walking between its harbour defences, civic buildings and places of worship reveals how Heraklion’s history remains visible in its streets.

Share a Cretan dinner with your small group in Heraklion. Taste island dishes such as dakos, made with barley rusk, tomato and mizithra cheese, and kaltsounia pastries finished with honey and cinnamon.

Raise a toast with raki, Crete’s traditional grape spirit. The meal introduces ingredients that recur across the island’s cooking, from olive oil and local cheeses to the herbs and honey of its varied landscape.

Explore the Palace of Knossos with a Local Expert, walking through the Central Court and Throne Room of Crete’s largest surviving Minoan palace complex. See reconstructed frescoes, including the image known as the Prince of the Lilies.

Traditionally linked to King Minos, the Bronze Age site served administrative and ceremonial purposes. Its scale, layout and surviving details offer a window into the society that built and rebuilt the complex over many centuries.

Visit the Heraklion Archaeological Museum with a Local Expert to examine objects from Knossos and other Cretan sites. See Minoan ceramics, jewellery, seals and fresco fragments displayed across the museum’s collections.

These carefully worked objects bring Bronze Age craftsmanship, belief and daily life into closer view. The visit provides valuable context for Crete’s palace sites by showing the original artefacts recovered from across the island.

Explore Chania’s layered old town with a Local Expert, beginning in Splantzia, the former Ottoman district. View the Church of Agios Nikolaos, a Venetian-era building later converted into a mosque, and notice its surviving minaret.

Continue into the Jewish quarter to learn about the community associated with the restored Etz Hayyim Synagogue. The walk reveals how Venetian, Ottoman and Jewish histories remain present in Chania’s neighbourhoods and communal landmarks.

Choose an optional dinner in Psiri, one of central Athens’ lively dining neighbourhoods. Spend an evening enjoying the area’s restaurant atmosphere and Greek food in the company of fellow travellers.

Psiri’s narrow streets and mix of older buildings and contemporary gathering places give the evening a distinctly urban setting. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour; the itinerary does not specify a set menu or included entertainment.