Greece - Santorini, Naxos and Athens

Headed out there this summer in that order.

Santorini - any suggestions on how to go about wine tasting for an afternoon? Better to book it with a tour company? private guide? Maybe call up 1-2 places and book it on my own? We are staying at Vedema for 2 nights (which is a vineyard to some degree from what I gather and closer to other wineries) and then Mystique for another 2 days. So I guess while at Vedema we are closer if we want to get some sort of taxi to 1-2 local wineries?

Any restaurant suggestions or bar suggestions or other hints for those 3 islands?

Flights/Hotels all set, just looking to fill in some details. 4 nights in Santorini, 3 nights in Naxos and Athens.

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If you have 4 days on the island, Santo is definitely worth your time. They have a wide selection of wines, of which I enjoyed several, and the view is amazing, especially for sunset.

Metaxi Mas is a terrific restaurant, though Cretan. Not far from where you are staying.

Thanks all - I agree we are not super excited about Athens per se, but given the boat schedules between Naxos and Athens, we are getting in likely around dinner time. So the first day/night is really a travel day. So we’ll have 2 full days, before we leave. I guess I could look to add a day onto Naxos to do 4 Santorini, 4 Naxos and 2 Athens. Not sure I can add to Santorini because we booked those on points and they are hard to get hotels (At least Mystique is hard to book on points).

Looks like we’ll hit Santo and maybe 1 of those other vineyards. The other ones mentioned (by M Kaplan) - I am assuming we can set up a time for a tour/tasting? For Santo it seems if its a large co-op it may just be an open walk in for tasting? Do they do tours?

Thoughts on car rentals especially on Naxos? I’d assume Santorini has plenty of taxis as well as Athens?

I found this article to be helpful during a recent visit to Athens.

The hospitality and indigenous varietal tasting at Oinoscent was top notch. Shopping the cellar was fun too.

Looks good - I’ll have plenty of “greek’’ food I am sure so Cretan may be a nice change.

Thanks for the link. I’ll be reading it shortly

I went to Sigalas. Nice tasting, I thought the wines were very good. Just below Oia.

Selene Meze and Wine in beautiful Pyrgos. Good food and good wine, particularly an interesting BTG list.

To Psaraki - in the working marina of Vlichada. Best seafood I found on Santorini.

Anogi - very tasty taberna in Imerovigli

Aktaion - very tasty very simple taberna in Firostefani.

Varoulko had some great seafood in Athens.

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Any recommendations for The town of Fira?

We have a 3 bedroom with a sunset view near Fira. Was thinking to buy take out dinner and eat on the deck of the Airbnb.

If you want to go a bit deeper, I have found Yiannis Karakasis to be a good resource. In addition to providing a ton of regional detail his work shows a lot of integrity…i.e he walks the line between advocacy and criticism pretty adeptly.

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Aktaion - very tasty very simple taberna in Firostefani

10 - 15 minute walk north from Fira.

We traveled to Santorini in early May 2017 and did a day of wine touring. We don’t like to taste and drive - so we made arrangements with a local tour company Roussos Tours www.roussostours.gr. I gave them a list of who where we wanted to taste and they made all of the arrangements. Price was reasonable - included a large Mercedes Van and driver for the day and they did a great job. He even drove us down to the black sand beach for a walk around, as we had not seen that yet as we were staying on the other side of the island. We visited Sigalas, Gaia and Argyros. Wanted to visit Hatzidakis, but they were closed during the time of our visit. My favorite visit was at Gaia - where we sat at a table on the beach overlooking the sea as we tased our wines - also my favorite wines. Sigalas was also great with a broader range of wines. Argyros is very big and modern - not as charming as the other two and much more commercial. We stayed in Oia for 4 nights at Katikies and it was just lovely. Have a great time! Here is a link to my tasting story from CT - highlighting the various visits - if that is helpful. Wine tasting in Greece - CellarTracker

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Three full days in Athens is two too many

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its not 3 full days in athens, its 3 nights. We’ll get to Athens via ferry from Naxos, so I assume that is around 12-2pm or so. Then transit to the hotel, check in, etc. My guess is we would check in, walk around a bit to get our senses on direction in the city, go for dinner and call it a night. so that leaves us 2 full days to explore the city, which by itself may even be too much, who knows. Though our goal on this trip is some R&R. so even if we sleep in one day and go to a cafe and just hang out, its better than being at home doing the same!

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Perfect, walk up to the acropolis and then back down to the plaka. And then check out the changing of the guard at the government building.

A couple ideas for day trips out of Athens that are absolutely worthwhile

Delphi and Cape Sounion/Temple of Poseidon are very enjoyable. If you head to the latter, the are some fun tabernas on the waterfront

If you have extra time you should absolutely add Paros to that List.

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