Results tagged “Santorini” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

If you're checking into this blog for some guidance about travel to Greece, here's a simple piece of advice I just discovered firsthand: Pass up going in the summer if you can possibly avoid it. Shoot for May, early June, September, or October instead. Unless, of course, you prefer being with lots of other people, intense heat, and overrun tourist attractions.

I was told July and August are VERY busy here and the beaches, nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, and archaeological sites are all jammed. I have to assume most visitors really enjoy themselves and have a wonderful time with so much great stuff to see and do. After all, there's good reason for all the popularity. But given the timing of our stay here in Greece (first half of May), I'd bet it would be pretty hard to beat the incredible weather, uncrowded islands, and ease of touring the sights we experienced during this time of year.

Lucky for us, we didn't even have to resort to taking the boys out of school, at least not this year, to be here before the season officially starts. Take it from someone who has spent the last forty-five weeks touring some of the world's most popular tourist attractions, it's a bonus to be in these special places without the all-too-common throngs of sightseers. And if there's any good news to come out of the global financial crisis, it's that you can now journey abroad and generally find smaller crowds. The recession has certainly played a significant role in reducing the usually high number of visitors to not just Greece, but destinations all across the world. So in hindsight, I guess we picked a pretty good year to take this little global jaunt (more on this in my next post).          

Because we want this trip to be more about education than vacation, we bought the boys a children's book about ancient civilizations to help them better understand the history behind the places we'd visit and things we'd see.  Otherwise, they're just a "pile of really old rocks." Since I was eager to freshen up on Greek mythology myself, I'm not embarrassed to admit that I found the comprehension level of this book just right (Hey, this mythology business can be quite convoluted!).  Armed with some knowledge, sunblock, a good appetite, and sixteen days before our next flight, we were ready to roll.