The season for this holiday is:
01 September 2019 - 31 October 2019
01 April 2020 - 30 June 2020
01 September 2020 - 31 October 2020
10 nights: 01 September 2019 - 31 October 2019, 01 April 2020 - 30 June 2020 & 01 September 2020 - 31 October 2020
Start any day | End by latest date(s) shown above
| Starting | Price | Single room |
|---|---|---|
| 1 - 30 Sep 2019 | £995 | £340 |
| 1 - 21 Oct 2019 | £945 | £325 |
| 1 Apr - 12 Jun 2020 | £1030 | £365 |
| 13 - 20 Jun 2020 | £995 | £350 |
| 1 - 30 Sep 2020 | £1030 | £365 |
| 1 - 21 Oct 2020 | £995 | £350 |
| 3rd & 4th person discount | -£115 | |
| Single traveller supplement | £115 |
Includes accommodation, meals, travel between hotels and any other services integral to the holiday as described, plus a detailed information pack, but no travel from the UK, nor any connecting travel from the airport unless stated below.
Included travel: 10 days’ category B car hire (e.g. VW Polo or similar with manual transmission)
Driving time to the first hotel: Athens 3h
Driving time from the final hotel: Athens 2h45
If you choose to fly via Kalamata, we recommend starting in Nafplion and ending in Kardamili
Driving time to first hotel: Kalamata 2h
Driving time from the final hotel: Kalamata 1h
Book your flights through us and we'll find the best route and times to suit you. Please contact us to find out more about our flight booking service. We can also book connecting travel - see below.
Room upgrades (£ per person per night)
| Hotel Bastione Malvasia, Monemvasia | ||
|---|---|---|
| Superior with balcony & sea view: 01 Apr - 30 Jun 2020 | £7 | |
| Superior with balcony & sea view: 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2020 | £7 |
| Notos Hotel, Kardamili | ||
|---|---|---|
| Apartment with balcony: 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2019 | £18 | |
| Apartment with balcony: 01 Apr - 30 Jun 2020 | £18 | |
| Apartment with balcony: 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2020 | £18 |
Extra nights (£ per person per night) in a double or single room
Prices include an extra day's hire car.| Hotel Byzantion, Mystras (B&B) | Double room | Single room |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2019 | £58 | £80 |
| 01 Apr - 30 Jun 2020 | £50 | £72 |
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2020 | £50 | £72 |
| Hotel Bastione Malvasia, Monemvasia (B&B) | Double room | Single room |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2019 | £80 | £110 |
| 01 Apr - 30 Jun 2020 | £68 | £104 |
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2020 | £68 | £104 |
| Notos Hotel, Kardamili (B&B) | Double room | Single room |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2019 | £80 | £115 |
| 01 Apr - 30 Jun 2020 | £65 | £99 |
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2020 | £65 | £99 |
| Hotel Marianna, Nafplion (B&B) | Double room | Single room |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2019 | £78 | £94 |
| 01 Apr - 30 Jun 2020 | £65 | £80 |
| 01 Sep - 31 Oct 2020 | £65 | £80 |
Travelling from the UK
| Outward route | Airline |
|---|---|
| Bristol - Athens | easyJet |
| Outward route | Airline |
|---|---|
| Edinburgh - Athens | Aegean Airlines, easyJet |
| Outward route | Airline |
|---|---|
| Leeds Bradford - Athens (via Amsterdam Schiphol) | KLM |
| Outward route | Airline |
|---|---|
| Gatwick - Athens | Aegean Airlines, easyJet |
| Outward route | Airline |
|---|---|
| Heathrow - Athens | Aegean Airlines, British Airways |
| Outward route | Airline |
|---|---|
| Stansted - Athens | Ryanair |
| Outward route | Airline |
|---|---|
| Manchester - Athens | Aegean Airlines, easyJet |
This list of flight options should be used as a guide only, and you should check each airline’s website for current routes, frequency and schedules. Not all flights operate daily, and may not run for the entire season. You should also heed the latest flight arrival time and earliest flight departure time, as it may not be possible to arrange connecting travel outside these times. Please do not book your flights until we have confirmed your accommodation to you. Alternatively, our expert reservations team will be happy to offer advice and to make flight bookings for you. We charge £35 per person for our flight booking service (£60 for India and Nepal). Your flights are then covered by our package-booking conditions, which give you greater protection in the event of delay or cancellation, as well as providing ATOL cover.
If you've experienced this holiday first hand, why not write a review?
We are keen for as many customers as possible to review their holiday. To make it easier to do so, we include a specific review section on our post-holiday questionnaire, and this is what we publish here, unedited. Read our full review policy >
A wonderful, relaxed holiday. We having been planning to do this one for ages and it lived up to expectations. The archaeological sites were fantastic as were the museums at Mycenae and Nafplio and the small museum in Sparta. I loved the mingling of myth and history. Our favourite hotel was the Notos Hotel Apartments at Kardamyli - waking up to the sun on the sea with a breakfast of Greek yoghurt, figs, honey and freshly squeezed orange juice on the balcony. What could be nicer! We spent a night in Athens on our way home and my husband had his wallet stolen by a very professional gang of thieves on the metro from central Athens to the Airport - it might be worth including a warning to future travellers. (The wallet had been inside a zipped trouser pocket and attached with a split ring and a clasp to a ring sewn in to the trousers!)
Excellent holiday with a good mix of history and hiking. Walking notes and suggestions for places to visit very helpful. Excellent driving directions made it easy to drive to the various locations. Accommodation very good. We enjoyed the restaurants at the front in Nafplion and also Kastro Karima, one street level down from the hotel. In Kardamili we enjoyed all three of your recommendations, particularly Elies Restaurant with well cooked delicious food. In all, a thoroughly enjoyable holiday from start to finish.
There were many highlights! The flowers were profuse wherever we went and the countryside was green - a highlight of going in May. A well designed holiday because the four locations were very different. We appreciated the contrasts of the classical and medieval ruins. We enjoyed the superb food in family-run restaurants. Your recommendations were good.
A wonderful, relaxed holiday. We having been planning to do this one for ages and it lived up to expectations. The archaeological sites were fantastic as were the museums at Mycenae and Nafplio and the small museum in Sparta. I loved the mingling of myth and history. Our favourite hotel was the Notos Hotel Apartments at Kardamyli - waking up to the sun on the sea with a breakfast of Greek yoghurt, figs, honey and freshly squeezed orange juice on the balcony. What could be nicer! We spent a night in Athens on our way home and my husband had his wallet stolen by a very professional gang of thieves on the metro from central Athens to the Airport - it might be worth including a warning to future travellers. (The wallet had been inside a zipped trouser pocket and attached with a split ring and a clasp to a ring sewn in to the trousers!)
Excellent holiday with a good mix of history and hiking. Walking notes and suggestions for places to visit very helpful. Excellent driving directions made it easy to drive to the various locations. Accommodation very good. We enjoyed the restaurants at the front in Nafplion and also Kastro Karima, one street level down from the hotel. In Kardamili we enjoyed all three of your recommendations, particularly Elies Restaurant with well cooked delicious food. In all, a thoroughly enjoyable holiday from start to finish.
There were many highlights! The flowers were profuse wherever we went and the countryside was green - a highlight of going in May. A well designed holiday because the four locations were very different. We appreciated the contrasts of the classical and medieval ruins. We enjoyed the superb food in family-run restaurants. Your recommendations were good.
An additional assistance for first time travellers to the Peloponnese would have been a tour guide book. We found that identifying options to travel to without a tour guide book, were difficult to achieve.
This holiday exceeded all our expectations. Meandering through the Peloponnese is a memory we will always treasure. The beauty of the countryside and the hospitality of the Greek people is second to none. It seems that there is a 'wowee' archaeological site around every corner. One piece of advice is that the cobbled streets of Monemvasia are challenging for the elderly or those with mobility problems but there are men with trolleys who, for five Euros, will take your luggage to your hotel and even to your room.
Cocktails on the roof terrace of the Hotel Herodion are an excellent way to relax after the journey to Athens!
Check opening times of monuments carefully in advance – ‘winter opening hours’ seem to continue into May for some sites and times are not always as stated in the Inntravel notes. We found that, for the most popular sites, if we arrived relatively late, say mid-afternoon, then most of the tour groups would have left or would be about to leave and we then avoided the worst of the crowds. This worked well for the Acropolis which we did at the end of our day of walking around Athens – this also meant that we visited the Acropolis Museum before climbing to the monument itself which gave us more context about what we were seeing when we got there. Arriving mid-afternoon also worked for Mycenae and for Epidavros. Ancient Corinth is well worth visiting. We fitted it in on the way out from Athens to Mystras and it was wonderful – peaceful, interesting and evocative. There is also a very good taverna for lunch on the right as you come out of the side exit from the site – ‘Tavernaki Tou Gamprou’.
We cannot recommend the Hotel Byzantion in Mystras as it is not really up to the usual standard of Inntravel hotels. Also be warned that Mystras village has very little to offer in the way of restaurants – although the lamb chops at the Mystras Inn are very good. If you do find yourself staying in Mystras then there is a lovely pastry shop just round the corner in the village square. The lady there is very helpful and the savoury and sweet pastries made a delicious picnic later while exploring the Byzantine city. We slotted in a visit to seaside Gythio en route from Mystras to Monemvasia and found that this made for a lovely day. Straightforward journey; delightful town to stroll around; interesting Museum of the Mani; wonderful lazy lunch at a harbourside restaurant and a late afternoon arrival at Monemvasia – perfect!
Monemvasia: wonderful hotel and a privilege to be able to stay in this glorious town. The ruined Upper Town is well worth the not-too-difficult climb – but it might be best to head up there early in the day before it gets too hot and in order to have time to get round everything that there is to see. We visited Areopolis on our way to Kardamili and it was quite interesting – there is another good museum there in the Pikoulakis Tower which is worth a visit. Instead of having lunch here we continued the short distance down to the coastal village of Limeni (careful – tricky turn-off to spot!) and had lunch at Takis. This was idyllic – sat alongside the water eating fresh fish – wonderful!
Kardamili: be aware that the hotel is a little way out of town so you really have to drive in each evening for dinner. (The Elies restaurant at Ritsa beach was closed in the evenings.) Our stay happened to coincide with the town’s annual Jazz Festival – organised by Norwegians! So the town was a little busier than we might have expected for the time of year, but it caused no issues and was actually rather nice. There was one particular evening when we ended up sat in a Greek restaurant by the sea, eating delicious fish while listening to a Mancunian band playing Polish-Yiddish folk music to an audience largely made up of Norwegians – bizarre and delightful! Recommended restaurants: Harilaos; Lela’s; Kiki’s. Also we had lunch one day at a bar down by the sea which is run by a real character. The ‘cold plate selection’ was wonderful. It is at the end of the street running down to the sea just beside the Post Office and I think the bar is called ‘Ta Kumaristria’.
Kardamili: We recommend driving up into the mountains inland from Kardamili and Stoupa – wonderful scenery and interesting villages, deserted monasteries and tower houses (Bradt guidebook has suggested tour). Kastania is particularly lovely – walk up the hill from the platea to find churches (actually open!) with amazing frescoes. The small taverna in the platea is a delightful place for lunch (wonderful local sausage!). We visited Mycenae en route between Kardamili and Nafplio and this worked out really well – except that lunch (in Mykines) was very basic. It meant that we arrived at the site a little after 2pm and there were not too many coach parties. We also had plenty of time to wander round this large and extraordinary site (the tholos tombs are mind-boggling!) and as the afternoon wore on there were even fewer people around so we could really appreciate the place. Arriving at Nafplio quite late in the afternoon worked well.
We visited the Heraion and Tiryns from Nafplio before exploring Nafplio itself. For us, trying to do Mycenae as well as other sites in one day would have been too much. Parking in Nafplio was horrific on the day we arrived – it might be advisable not to time your holiday so that you are arriving here on a Saturday! Other days parking was OK. In Nafplio, if you head up through the gate from the hotel into the fortified area and then down to the beach below you will find a paved path that takes you along, under the cliffs, out to the western tip of the headland and then round to the harbour. This makes for a lovely evening stroll – and delivers you right to the area where the best fish restaurants abound! Driving across to the delightful seaside village of Ancient Epidavros in the morning and having a leisurely lunch there by the sea means that, again, you can arrive at the Ancient Theatre in the mid-afternoon after the crowds have gone. This was wonderful.
INNTRAVEL NOTE: These customers combined a stay in Athens with our Journey through the Peloponnese
An enjoyable visit to an area that we were not familiar with.