Page Contents
- Guidebook used
- Itinerary
- Means of travel
- Weather
- Money
- Tipping
- Language
Guidebook used
We used Rick Steves guidebooks for Italy, Greece, and Eastern Europe. We have used Rick Steves books on other trips and have been happy with his suggestions and guidance. All hotels were selected from his suggestions. Just before leaving, we took Steves’ advice and tore the book into sections and brought just the sections we needed, like sightseeing, shopping, and eating.
Itinerary
We have traveled to Europe a number of times before and so for this 50th anniversary trip, we searched for places we had not visited. We first thought of Portugal, but as we had visited Spain a few years earlier, we opted for Athens as our main destination. From there, we rejected the Greek Islands, as we were traveling in early May and we are not big “beach” people. So, we decided to go north to Dubrovnik and then on to a return visit to Venice, which we first visited in 1988.
We traveled from 5/7 to 5/19 with the following timetable
- JFK to Athens with a layover in Heathrow as there were no direct flights. We arrived in Athens at 2:30 AM on 5/8.
- Athens – 3 nights
- Dubrovnik – 5 nights
- Venice – 3 nights
- Athens – 1 night – to be sure we would not be late for our return flight to US
- Athens to JFK with layover in Heathrow
Before we left, we had booked all hotels (and prepaid 2 of 4), intra-Europe flights, local guides/tours, and most ground transportation. We had ideas of what we wanted to visit in each location, but did not have a fixed schedule. However, we scheduled private tour guides for 3-4 hour tours in Athens and Dubrovnik using guides recommended by our hotels.
Means of travel
- JFK to Athens– British Airways business class (with change of planes in Heathrow)
- Athens to Dubrovnik– Turkish Air coach (with change of planes in Istambul)
- Dubrovnik to Venice– Alitalia coach (with change of planes in Rome)
- Venice to Athens – Alitalia coach (with change of planes in Rome)
- Athens to JFK – British Airways business class (with change of planes in Heathrow)
NOTES:
1) Each travel day took most of the day as all flights involved stopovers and change of planes. Better planning (by me!!) could have avoided some of this. The BA layovers were unavoidable as we used some of our rapidly diminishing BA points to get slightly cheaper business class tickets and they do not fly direct from NYC to Athens.
2) There is a ONCE A WEEK direct flight by Air Croatia from Dubrovnik to Venice (Wed, I think) so some better planning could have utilized that and avoided the Alitalia Dubrovnik to Rome to Venice experience.
3) We could have and should have departed directly from Rome to JFK (probably via Heathrow), instead of traveling at the end of our trip back to Athens for one night just to get the Athens to Heathrow to JFK flights on BA. I attribute that to booking the BA business class flight first and not investigating European flights more carefully.
4) We booked coach seats for all our intra-Europe flights as they were never longer than about 2 hours. But, between Alitalia and Turkish Air, the seats on Turkish Air had noticeably more leg room. Alitalia really packs the seats in.
Weather
We hoped that our early May schedule would give us good weather, which was partially true. But, we did hit rain in Dubrovnik for two days and rain in Venice for two more days. In hindsight, I think traveling in LATE May would have been better, especially from a temperature standpoint. To make matters worse, at least in Dubrovnik, the locals were complaining of how cool the weather was compared to other years. Overall, most mornings and early evenings required a light coat and some days required a rain jacket and umbrella.
Money
We got $1500 worth of Euros from our local bank before leaving, which some say is a bad move as the exchange rate is not as good. Euro’s are used in Greece and Italy but in Dubrovnik, we had to obtain Croatian Kunas. We easily did this using ATM’s in the Dubrovnik airport and within the city (but always ones labelled as part of a bank). We did not get a lot of Kunas as we were able to rely on credit cards and for the tours/taxi, they accepted Euro’s. The hotel in Dubrovnik was prepaid in Euros. We did make an ATM withdrawal in Greece because I needed to have Euros (cash) to pay for the hotel in Venice (to get a better rate).
Before departing, we had notified all credit card companies NOT to reject transactions from any of our destinations. We also found out if there was an extra service charge on transactions outside the US and then only used cards those that had no foreign transactions fees.
TIpping
We always asked if “service” was included and if not, tipped about 10%.
Language
I did a re-review of a one day Italian survivor CD to learn some basic phrases for Italy (e.g. where is, how much, left, right, etc). I did not even try to learn any Greek or Croatian. As it turned out, we had really no problems with language anywhere as we were always in tourist friendly areas where at least some English was spoken. On this trip, we never really traveled into more remote areas. The biggest problem we encountered was getting a lunch in a sit down restaurant in the airport in Rome, where you would have least expected it.
Press back button and then select Athens