Top Santorini Private Sightseeing Tours - page 23

Communication before the tour was excellent. Our guide was Thanos who was knowledgeable, personable and forced us to have a great time! Thanos exceeded our expectations in every respect. This 6-hour tour was perfect and pricing was competitive. Again, very responsive communications in advance with George and our guide Thanos made for a fun and informative day, an excellent intro to Santorini.

Duke, our guide, picked us up on time in a clean Mercedes. We had a 4hr private tour so we could pretty much choose where we wanted to visit in the timeframe. I would recommend you start your trip as early as possible to avoid the crowds, especially if you want to visit Oia. Duke was very knowledgeable of the history of Santorini and was fun and made the tour very enjoyable.

We enjoyed this tour of Santorini. We booked this as a cruise port excursion. As this was our first time in Santorini, we wanted to see some of the “greatest hits” and take a few photos, which is exactly what we did. That said, due to the amount of ground to cover and the number of things to see, it felt a bit like a rushed march at times, especially in Oias which was very crowded even at 9am. In addition to Oias with the classic views, we visited the monastery for views of the entire island from the highest point, a traditional village Megalochoria, and the black sand beach. Our guide Aris was great at giving us options to explore each site on our own vs accompanying us directly. We generally opted for the latter, especially in Oias which was helpful given the crowds. We also appreciated having him there when a team of mules came by on the narrow streets at a very fast pace! He also took us to a private church with blue domes that was out of the way for some photos, rather than spending time waiting in the long lines for the usual picture spot in Oias. We had lunch in a nice traditional Greek taverna. Here too, Aris was great in determining our preference for a spot focusing on view/location vs a more authentic experience. We opted for the latter and were very satisfied with that choice. We did need to be clear about our priorities and ask a lot of questions about the island, and then Aris was great at communicating. We opted to skip the bells of Fira that we had planned to see, because at the end of our 5-hour tour we were a bit fatigued, even though we are two fit, active women who do a lot of walking, but we were also just 1 day after our transatlantic flight and tour in Athens and were still a bit jet lagged, so we may have been over ambitious. We opted to pay extra for round trip water taxi service to Ammoúdi, which was the right choice for us. Given the 5-hour tour and the amount of driving, waiting for the gondola lines would have probably significantly decreased what we were able to do around the different locations. I might skip the village visit if I had it to do over. I did find that having my cell phone international plan made pickup communication with Katerina, the coordinator, and Aris, the driver, easier. My friend had only WiFi at the port, and communicating about pickup may have been more difficult at Ammoúdi with only that. All in all I would do this again for a first visit, it gave me a better idea of what to expect on the island and to focus any future visits. We did get some great pictures!