Disclaimer: This post contains Affiliate Links for products I’m currently using. By using these links you won’t pay any additional fees, but support me to keep this site running!

---

GREECE ITINERARY: ATHENS, NAXOS, PAROS, SANTORINI

Recommended 10-Day Greece Itinerary:

Athens (2 nights)

Naxos (2 nights)

Paros (2 nights)

Santorini (3 nights)

—

Total days: 10

---

Before I start on this itinerary, I just want to point out that this is very fast paced. Also, it is mostly geared towards US travelers that do not get a ton of time off from work and have expensive flights to the EU. Greece is not like any other European destination. It is about the experience. When you go to Greece, be prepared for down time and relaxation. This can be unlike other European cities where there is so much to see and not a lot of time to do it in so you are go-go-go. If you show this itinerary to a European that has a ton of time off and has 25 euro flights, they will most likely scoff and say that you can easily spend 2 weeks in Naxos alone. That being said, as a US citizen with a full-time job and not as much PTO as is standard for European countries, we don’t have the luxury of flying 14 hours to spend two weeks on one island in Greece.

Any who - off my soapbox! Haha! This is the itinerary that my cousin and I did when we went to Greece this past October. It was amazing and perfect for us! We didn’t feel like we moved too much or too little. This was the end of the season though so a lot of things were beginning to close up for winter. This made visiting the little villages and getting around a lot faster than dealing with the crowds during the high season. It also meant that several of our tours ended up canceling due to weather (too windy). If I were to go back, I would choose to go the first or second week in September when it is the beginning of off-season, but not too windy and you can still swim.

---

ATHENS

DAY 1:

Arrive into Athens and get settled into your hotel. If you’re like us, then your flight probably arrives very early in the morning. We were exhausted! I had reserved our hotel room for the night prior so that we could check in and freshen up/nap (who are we kidding?? We we straight to bed haha!) before heading out to explore for the day.

After waking up from our nap about noon, we stopped to grab some lunch at a gyro place (did not disappoint) and then headed straight to the Acropolis to see the famous Parthenon. Fun fact - in Greece, they put fries in their gyros! 😋

The views of the city from the Acropolis are gorgeous! It’s definitely a can’t miss in Athens! We walked straight up and bought skip the line tickets. Although, I’m not sure how necessary that was as we were traveling during COVID so there wasn’t much of a line to begin with. We spent the rest of the time wondering around the city. We tried to go to A for Athens (they have an amazing rooftop bar with great city views) but they were having a private event so we didn’t stay.

We made our way to The Clumsies though which had some super interesting cocktails and tapas options to snack on.

After chilling at The Clumsies and watching the bartenders flare, we walked around and did some light shopping. We had to get a cat shirt. If you’ve ever been to Greece, then you know what I’m talking about! The cats 🐈‍⬛are everywhere! Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head.. 🤪 They are seriously everywhere to the point when we went to Santorini and didn’t really see as many, we didn’t feel like we were in Greece anymore.

For dinner, we were going to head to Cafe Avissinia for meza and live music and then dinner at Kuzina for great city views. We were so exhausted that we decided to have dinner at our hotel that night. We stayed at Academias Hotel Athens and ate at their Nyx Rooftop restaurant, which also has amazing views of the Parthenon. We were not disappointed at all!

---

naxos

DAY 2:

The next morning, we woke up bright and early for our quick flight to Naxos. By quick flight, I mean it was about 30 minutes. You land at this tiny airport and walk off the plane via stairs. There is one baggage claim area that is outside. We grabbed our bags and a taxi and made our way to the Naxian Utopia Luxury Villas & Suites. We booked the Two Bedroom Petite Villa Sea View with Private Pool & Outdoor Jacuzzi. This place would be perfect for families as it is a short walk into town and the villa was very spacious.

In order to tour the island, I highly recommend renting a car. The hotel had a local company bring a car over for our stay. This was super convenient as we didn’t have to walk anywhere to pick it up or drop it off.

After checking in for our stay, we walked into town and grabbed lunch at a traditional Greek restaurant called Giannoulis. I had my first real Greek salad. If you didn’t know, traditional Greek salads do not come with lettuce but they come with a huge block of feta cheese. It was yummy!

---

For dinner, we ate at Apostolis and ordered entirely too many carbs with cheese haha!

---

DAY 3:

Naxos is a great place for people that love to hike! Today, we took our rental car up into the mountains for a quick day hike. We didn’t bring the proper shoes so we didn’t get too far. It had started to rain and the rocks were very slick so we turned around. On the way back into town, we stopped at a restaurant with panoramic views of the valley and watched the sunset. It was gorgeous! If you decide to include Naxos in your Greece Itinerary, make sure to stop here!

---

Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon!

---

---

Contact me to help with your custom Greek Itinerary today!

---

Disclaimer: This post contains Affiliate Links for products I’m currently using. By using these links you won’t pay any additional fees, but support me to keep this site running!

---

LONDON AND PARIS ITINERARY

Recommended 7-day London and Paris itinerary:

London (3 nights)

Paris (3 nights)

—

Total days: 7

---

LONDON

DAY 1:

Upon arriving into LHR, grab a taxi, take the tube, or get in your scheduled car service and head to your hotel.

If you arrive early enough, then you have a full day to explore the city! Check into your hotel and drop your bags. If you arrive early enough, then make a reservation at The Gallery for high tea and lunch.

After lunch, check out the London Eye or just walk around and acclimate yourself with the city.

In the afternoon, you could do a Jack the Ripper Tour and learn more about London’s dark past.

---

DAY 2:

Grab breakfast at Peggy Porschen and then meet for your tour of Westminster Abby.

Once your tour is complete, grab lunch at Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden.

We opted to see Harry Potter and The Cursed Child in theatre. You can get your tickets here. If you chose to see Harry Potter in theatre, then I would recommend either eating at the theatre or grabbing something quick during intermission between the two parts.

If you chose an alternate day 2 activity, then I would recommend making reservations at Little Georgia (Georgian food- get the hatchapuri!) or Dishoom (Indian food).

ALTERNATE DAY 2 IDEAS:

There are so many options for Day 2. You could do a full day city tour, take a day trip to see stonehenge, see a play at a local theatre (Hamilton or Harry Potter), tour Buckingham Palace and watch the changing of the guards, or do a Harry Potter themed tour.

Whatever you choose, it is sure to be an exhausting fun-filled day!

---

DAY 3:

Breakfast at The Parlour before your Harry Potter walking tour. Harry Potter not for you, then, try a half day city tour or another option mentioned above.

Lunch and then you can do a World War II history tour if its up your ally before dinner or just chill and take in the city.

---

PARIS

DAY 4:

Spend the morning exploring Notting Hill or chilling at a cafe for your last few hours in London.

Head to the airport to catch your flight to Paris. I find flying is usually cheaper and faster than taking the train. I like to check out low-cost air carriers like Ryan Air or Easyjet for intra-Europe flights.

After arriving and dropping your luggage, jump on with a tour to better acquaint yourself with Paris. We opted for the Hidden Gems of Paris tour. You can then grab lunch near the Effiel Tower and make that your next stop for exploring the city.

Alternatively, you could go to a local market and pick up some stuff for sandwiches and have a picnic lunch by the Effiel Tower instead.

Spend the afternoon exploring the city before having dinner at Juvenilles Wine Bar.

---

day 5:

Grab breakfast at FTG Paris before heading to explore the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay. If you start the day early enough, then head to Montmartre for a tour of the area.

Lunch at the famous Pink Mamma.

In the afternoon, spend some time at the Moulin Rouge or catch a show before dinner at Septime.

---

DAY 6:

Day trip to the Palace of Versailles.

End the evening with dinner on a Seine River Cruise. For the best view, book either the premier or privilege package.

alternate day 6:

Grab breakfast at HolyBelly before heading to see Notre-Dame and do some shopping in Le Marais. In the afternoon, tour the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.

---

DAY 7:

Say goodbye to Paris and head to the airport for your flight home.

---

---

WHERE TO STAY:

LONDON:

Raddison Blu

The Hoxton

The Strand

PARIS:

Les Bains

Charles V

Hyatt du Louvre

---

This itinerary is action-packed! If you prefer a slower traveling pace or just like to get to a place and enjoy the vibe, then that is totally ok too! I usually only go to a place once so I like to hit everything possible in a short amount of time but it is anything but relaxing and I usually need a vacation from my vacation! HaHa!

---

ABOUT ME:

I am currently a practicing Inpatient Pharmacist with a love for traveling. I love to get off the beaten path and go places/do things that are not the normal “tourist” thing to do. I love hiking and adventure travel!

—

Follow me: @thatblondetravels

---

We just returned from our 2 week babymoon to Croatia. What a wonderful country! From the people to the sites, to the food, it was all-around an amazing experience.

While traveling during normal times can have it’s challenges, traveling during a worldwide pandemic can especially be challenging.

Despite the extra hoops to jump through, my husband and I really wanted to travel somewhere before we welcome our new addition in January. This trip was planned and replanned probably 7 times at least. We started off originally going on safari in Kenya and then ending the trip in Oman. While Kenya reopened to tourists starting September 1, they omitted US citizens coming from Texas and California and a couple other states. Option 2 was Hawaii. I planned a full 2 week itinerary to Kauai as their quarantine was to be lifted on August 31st. Around mid-August, the governor instituted a mandatory inter-island quarantine for anyone traveling from Maui to Kauai. While we were not going to Maui and therefore did not need to quarantine, all the tour companies cancelled our excursions and restaurants began to close.

After planning several extensive itineraries, I began to get discouraged as it didn’t look as if any travel plans that I made were going to come to fruition. I told my husband ok so last ditch effort, we are going to Croatia! If that doesn’t work out, then we’re spending 2 weeks in Tulum in Mexico in a beach house haha. Putting together custom itineraries is a very time consuming process with all the research that goes into it, so as you can imagine, I was getting burnt out.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS:

I began to research the specifics on what we would need to get into Croatia and how we were going to get there. First off - COVID testing requirements. In order to enter Croatia, you can bypass the mandatory 14 day quarantine by getting a negative COVID PCR test within 48 hours of crossing the border OR you can enter the country with an “expired” negative result and retest on arrival. If you choose option 2, then you have to quarantine until the results are available.

This part isn’t super complicated unless you are leaving on a holiday (Labor Day) and all the labs are closed. Due to our flights, which I will talk about next, we had to take a test and have the results on the day of our flight, which was Labor Day. I had to find a place that offered COVID testing for people that are not experiencing symptoms that also had their own in house lab and that was open on a holiday. Are you overwhelmed yet? LOL. Anything is possible though when you really want to go somewhere!

FLIGHTS

With testing figured out, next up was our flights. Due to travel restrictions and lack of travelers, flights were getting cancelled left and right. There are no direct flights from Dallas to Croatia and all the ones with stops had a very long layover (I’m talking 30+ hours to get there) and were also very expensive. A travel hack that I’ve learned is to find a direct flight into a popular European hub (such as London or Paris) and then search for a flight on a local airline such as Easyjet or Ryan Air. Flights intra-Europe can be extremely cheap if you use this option. For example, our flight from Pula, Croatia to LHR was 8 euro! For a flight that was showing as more than 2k on google flights to fly from DFW to Dubrovnik, I got for 70k AA points (~700 dollars) plus an additional 80 dollars pp.

We had originally booked a British Airways flight from LHR to Dubrovnik on the same day (so arriving on September 8th) but the UK re-instituted their quarantine coming from Croatia for their citizens so BA ended up canceling all of their flights to/from Croatia. Luckily, I was able to get a flight on EasyJet that left on September 9th from Gatwick to Dubrovnik. This is why we had to get our COVID tests the day of our flight to London since we wouldn’t be arriving into Croatia until 2 days later.

Excited about our first flight since February!

With flights booked and COVID test appointments made, the next thing to figure out was if we could transfer airports in London and how to do it. As I said, we were landing into LHR and our flight to Croatia wasn’t until the next day out of Gatwick. Gatwick airport is located south of London and there are several ways to get there during normal situations. One reason that we chose to fly into London was that US citizens can actually enter the UK, whereas, places like France and Germany we cannot. This was a contingency plan in case our flights were cancelled or there was a missed connection. If there is one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it was to have a backup plan for your backup plan. In order to figure out if we could transfer airports, I did a ton of research on my own but eventually resorted to trip advisor for some locals input.

UK BORDER CROSSING

In order to enter the UK, you had to fill out a locator form that had where you would be spending your time quarantining and for how long you would be in the UK. We were just staying for 24 hours so I filled out the paperwork with all of our information and submitted electronically 48 hours prior to arrival. The UK’s quarantine rules stated that you shouldn’t use public transportation in order to get to your quarantine location. When we arrived into London, we checked out prices on taxis (150 pounds is the standard rate) and then I checked Uber which was half the price. We ended up taking an Uber from Heathrow to Gatwick once we landed.

We were very nervous about the whole landing process and going through border control and then taxi-ing to our hotel. Concerns were: how strict will they be? how will we get food? what if our flight is cancelled?. The list goes on as I’m sure you can imagine.

Being nervous about everything, I had made and looked into several options if anything did happen. When landing in LHR, the border crossing was so smooth. It was like pre-pandemic except with less people. All the border guards were super chill. They asked if we’d filled out our locator form and to see it. I showed it to them and they asked where we were headed. We told them Croatia and they got very excited and wished us well on our journey. Like I said super easy! We made it through the border, grabbed our luggage, grabbed a quick breakfast, and then hoped in our Uber to head to Gatwick airport.

Hotels, EasyJet flight, and Croatia border crossing, to be continued in Part 2!