I still haven’t fully unpacked from our one week in Greece so it should be pretty easy to just head straight back, right? I’m missing all the gorgeous vines, beaches, and feta cheese. For anyone else heading out on a trip soon, here was our itinerary for one week in Greece, with most of our time spent in the Ionian Islands.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”airplane” wrap=”i”] New York to Athens
We flew on Emirates and left from Newark at 11:55 PM, this got us to Athens around 5:00 PM Athens time. There was a sweet promotion through Emirates last summer which led to this whole trip, so Robin and I each only paid about $400 round trip from New York to Athens. Adding on our flights between Cleveland/Los Angeles and New York our total for flights was about $600–$700 each.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”location-2″ wrap=”i”] 24 hours in Athens
After we got through “security” into Athens, this was legit nothing, they asked us no questions and just stamped our passports, we grabbed a taxi to Fresh Hotel where we stayed for one night before heading to Corfu the next day. Taxis between the airport and downtown Athens are a flat 38 euro, so it was nice to know that ahead of time to prep for the taxi back to the airport. Fresh Hotel was really nice, they had a modern design and everyone at the front desk was very helpful. We dropped our bags in the room and headed out in search of some food.
We made our way to Monastiraki and wandered through some shops looking for Greek sandals, they had awesome leather sandals for pretty cheap, so we stocked up.
We were on the border of Monastiraki and Plaka and there were a ton of restaurants to choose from. We picked Piazza Duomo a tribute to Robin’s new last name and got our first Saganaki of the trip, which ended up being the best. We also ordered a Greek salad and pesto pasta and then we headed back to Fresh Hotel for a drink on the rooftop.
Afterward, we went back to our room and I all of the sudden was STARVING so we had to order room service chips which, bless the lloyd, arrived hella quick. Luxe Life.
Cut to the next morning, we got up and filled up on hotel breakfast, I made a bonus cheese sandwich and stuck it in my purse for emergencies, and hit the streets to look at old stuff. We were able to get Greek SIM cards from a Vodafone truck near the hotel, but unfortunately, it only worked on my phone. It was 10 euro for a week of access and I mostly used it to insta-story our shenanigans and snapchat every single cat I saw. #WorthIt After that, we went close to the Parthenon but it was packed and hot and the ground was slippery so we peeped it from afar and bailed. We did a bit more wandering around, got lunch at Tzatziki and then grabbed our bags from the hotel and made our way to the airport for our 6 PM Olympic Air flight to Corfu.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”airplane” wrap=”i”] Athens to Corfu
This flight was pretty painless, no real delays, and the Athens airport was nice to hang in for a little bit. We sampled a zillion perfumes and then got on our flight. That bonus cheese sandwich came in handy on the plane and we shared it to make sure we didn’t starve to death on a one hour flight.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”location-2″ wrap=”i”] Corfu
The Corfu airport was tiny and I think we were the only flight getting in for a while. Our bags were the last to come out of the plane, and after we snatched those up we got a cab to Aeolos Beach Resort where we had a beach view bungalow, the beach view was a little hard to see, but the room itself was nice. We went to the resort buffet dinner and filled up on “Italian Night” food. Since we were so close to Italy, there was SO MUCH Italian food. The food was fine, we could see it being a good option for families since there were a lot of options for people, but we would rather have eaten somewhere else. After dinner, we grabbed a couple drinks from the resort bar and went back to the room to do a facemask and go to bed.
The next morning, we made reservations for the fancier restaurant on the resort for that night, grabbed some breakfast from the buffet, and then headed to the beach to slow roast for a couple hours. We got a couple Freddo Cappuccinos and then went back to our room to change and head into old Corfu town for the day. There is a bus stop directly across from the resort and we thought we were there at the right time to catch the bus into town, but it was late so we sat for a bit. The older Greek ladies sitting with us were clearly pissed about the delay and keep checking their watches and tut-tutting about it.
Once we got into town, we headed towards the fort, climbed around that, and then started wandering the streets.
Fun fact, Corfu is OBSESSED with kumquats and there were kumquat liquor and preserves everywhere. We got a delicious ice cream cone filled with ice cream covered in what looked like a birds nest made out of baklava ingredients, not sure that this was called, and tried to eat it before the sun melted it all over us. Then we grabbed some food, more saganaki, and grabbed the bus back to the resort for our dinner reservation.
The dinner food was okay, but it was nice to be right on the water. After dinner, it was time to watch the Greek folk dancers and drink some fairly gross white wine on the patio.
For our last partial day in Corfu, we slept off the wine in the sun at the beach and then hit the pool for a little bit. There was a very energetic water aerobics class right in front of our chairs that was hard to sleep through, but we did our best. We grabbed our bags from the lockers in the lobby and made our way to the airport.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”airplane” wrap=”i”] Corfu to Kefalonia
We got to the airport around 3 for our 4:40 PM Sky Express flight to Kefalonia and proceeded to sit at the airport for FIVE HOURS while they just continued to delay our flight for small amounts of time. There was one shop in our terminal and we once again sampled perfumes, bought chips, and slathered fancy skin creams on our hands to kill time. This was brutal and we would recommend taking a ferry for a more reliable departure time. One positive, I ate the most delicious chips of my life: lemon, pepper, oregano kettle chips, so if you know where I can buy these in the USA, hit me up in the comments.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”location-2″ wrap=”i”] Kefalonia
We were supposed to arrive around 6pm and ended up getting in around 11, so we sprinted to the Avis counter to see if we could rent a car. The taxi from the airport to Fiskardo where we were staying would have been about 60 euro with an additional 60 euro cab to get to the port for our ferry when we left, so we ended up saving some money with the car. It also gave us a lot of freedom to explore the island which was awesome. We stayed at the Almyra Hotel and it was lovely, we definitely would recommend it. We’ll do a full post about Kefalonia because it was our favorite part of the trip, so stay tuned for that!
[wp-svg-icons icon=”support” wrap=”i”] Kefalonia to Patras
We got the 8 AM ferry from Sami to Patras but wished we had booked the later ferry out of Poros because Kefalonia was amazing and we wished we could have stayed there longer. The ferry was fine, we spent most of the time napping and laughing at the hilarious instructional video for how not to be a jerk on a ferry. The English translations were a real highlight. We got into Patras and grabbed a cab to the CityLoft hotel.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”location-2″ wrap=”i”] 24 hours in Patras
We originally were booked into the Astir hotel, but I panicked when I found a whole new list of reviews that said it was actually disgusting inside. We quickly searched for a new hotel and settled on the CityLoft and chose to stay there instead. We popped into the Astir hotel and it was very smoky smelling in the lobby and it was jam-packed full of people lingering about, so we were glad we decided not to stay there. The CityLoft ended up being a great hotel and the breakfast was legit insane. We had enough food for probably a dozen people served just to us. We ended up screwing up our 24 hours in Patras and seemed to miss all the stuff we were supposed to do. We couldn’t find a lot of info on what to do with your time in Patras, so we’ll put together a little guide and share that on the blog soon. Check out our insta-story highlight for our review of the winery tour we took, it was very bizarre. Once again, we were thankful we had rented a car from Avis when we arrived so we could explore with total freedom. (Can you tell I’m obsessed with renting cars now??)
[wp-svg-icons icon=”truck” wrap=”i”] Patras to Athens
We headed out the next morning to start our drive from Patras to Athens. We made the day of it and stopped in a few towns along the way, so we’ll have a recap of that for you soon, too!
[wp-svg-icons icon=”location-2″ wrap=”i”] Final night in Athens
For our final night in Athens, we stayed at the Hilton, using points thanks to husband-of-the-blog Tai, and we checked in and headed out for some food. We went to Oroscopo, a restaurant that was filled with guests from the Viking River Cruise and the food was good! The pomegranate salad was delicious and even though we split a couple things, we continued on with our theme of having way too much food between the two of us. After dinner, we had a couple of delicious whiskey cocktails at CV Distiller near the hotel and then put ourselves to bed. The next morning, we headed back to Monastiraki to buy more sandals and little souvenirs and then hit a beauty store to stock up on peel-off face masks which we were first introduced to in Thailand a couple years ago.
[wp-svg-icons icon=”airplane” wrap=”i”] Athens to New York
Then we headed to the airport in our convertible Fiat rental car and debated upgrading to business class for our Emirates flight home. Spoiler, we didn’t cough up the $600 to upgrade and instead spent that money on cheesecake when we got to New York. In New York, we went straight to friends-of-the-blog Morgen, Jamie, and Huda’s apartment to crash for the night. We spent the next day hitting up all of the internet stores in SoHo, Everlane, Allbirds, Away, Glossier, etc., and then headed to the airport for our flights home. These were super delayed and mine was ultimately canceled around 9 PM, so I got to spend more time with my friends and their kitties before going home a day late.
That’s a wrap on our itinerary for one week in Greece! We’ve got a lot more to share, but if you have any questions or want to make sure we give you more details in our upcoming posts, let us know in the comments.
