Greece travel tips

Budget travel in Greece

What a visitor's money does in Greece: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.

Mid-range average across 33 guides · 5 is very cheap

Money

Euro (EUR) · 1 EUR = 1.15 USD · 1 EUR = 0.86 GBP

Euro. Santorini is the most expensive place in Greece — expect Oia prices to be double Athens. Book rentals early for any summer date.

ATMs

Avoid: Euronet, hotel lobby machines

Use: Alpha Bank, Piraeus Bank, National Bank of Greece

ATMs run dry in peak August. Withdraw in Fira rather than Oia.

Getting around

A short ride in Santorini: €5–10 across town — middling

The same metered taxis, ordered rather than flagged.

City by city, cheapest first

Mykonos Very cheap

Expensive, and the good places are not the ones on the waterfront. Kopanisti, a sharp local cheese, louza cured pork, and the tavernas in Ano Mera cost half what Chora does.

Thessaloniki Good value

The best eating in Greece by common consent: bougatsa for breakfast, gyros at any hour, mezedopoleia in Ladadika and Valaoritou, and the Jewish and Anatolian layers that other Greek cities lost. Cheap, and late.

Olympia Good value

Peloponnesian village food: lamb, wild greens, and the local olive oil, which is the real product of this valley. The village tavernas are geared to coach parties; the ones on the back road are not.

Karpathos Good value

Makarounes, hand-rolled pasta with onion and cheese; goat baked in a pot; and the honey and herbs from the mountains. Pigadia has the tavernas and the villages have the better ones.

Pelion Good value

Spetzofai, sausage and peppers in tomato; tsipouro with meze, which is the region’s ritual; and the apples and chestnuts the mountain grows. The village tavernas are the point.

Samos Good value

Samos is the sweet muscat wine and it is worth the visit to the co-operative; otherwise the north-coast fish tavernas, and the mountain villages for goat and wild greens.

Athens Good value

Skip Plaka’s tourist tavernas. Eat in Psyrri or Koukaki, order mezedes to share, and finish with a shot of tsipouro. Souvlaki should cost €3-4, not €10.

Meteora Good value

Thessalian mountain food: pies with wild greens, lamb slow-cooked in paper, and hilopites noodles. Kalambaka has more tavernas than a town its size should, because everyone stays a night. The local Tsipouro comes without anise here.

Zakynthos Good value

Ladotyri cheese, kept in oil; rabbit stifado; and the mandolato nougat. The town tavernas are far better than the resort strips at Laganas and Tsilivi.

Delphi Good value

Mountain food: goat, wild greens, formaela cheese from Arachova grilled at the table, and the honey. The village tavernas have the view and the prices to match; Arachova eats better.

Ios Good value

Taverna food, honestly done, and cheaper than the neighbouring islands: grilled fish at Koumbara, gyros in the village at four in the morning, and the Skarkos hill for a picnic instead.

Kefalonia Good value

Kefalonian meat pie, with rice and three meats; robola wine from the slopes of Ainos; and the Fiskardo fish tavernas, which charge for the harbour. Argostoli’s market is where the island shops.

Lefkada Good value

Lentils from Eglouvi, up in the mountains; salami from Lefkada town, which is a real thing; and the fish at Agios Nikitas. Nydri is the resort strip and priced like one.

Kos Good value

Krasotyri cheese, kept in wine; pitaridia, a pasta soup; and the tavernas in Zia and Pyli rather than the harbour strip. The Turkish influence on this coast is on every menu.

Skopelos Good value

Skopelos cheese pie, a coil of pastry fried to order; plums, dried and in everything; and the tavernas in the old town, which are good and unhurried.

Halkidiki Good value

Fish and the Macedonian kitchen from up the road: mussels from the gulf, grilled sardines, and the Sithonia tavernas that are worth driving to. Kassandra is the busier peninsula and priced for it.

Nafplio Good value

Peloponnesian: gogges pasta, lamb, and the oranges from the plain around Argos. The old town tavernas are good and the ones a street back are better value. Try the local Agiorgitiko wine.

Monemvasia Good value

Saitia, a local pie; the wine that gave English the word malmsey; and the tavernas inside the walls, which are priced for the setting. Gefyra, across the causeway, is cheaper.

Sifnos Good value

The reason to come. Revithada, chickpeas baked overnight in a clay pot and eaten on Sunday; mastelo, lamb in wine on a bed of vine twigs at Easter; and caper salad. Nicholas Tselementes, whose name became the Greek word for a cookbook, was from here.

Patmos Good value

Cheese pies with local myzithra; fish at Grikos and Kampos; and the pougia, a sweet pastry. Small island, few tables, and the monastery keeps the calendar of fasting days that the tavernas follow.

Zagori Good value

Epirot mountain cooking: pites, the pies that are the region’s art form, with greens or cheese or pumpkin; goat; and trout from the Voidomatis. The village guesthouses cook better than the restaurants.

Crete Mid-range

Cretan food is its own thing and one of the healthiest diets recorded — dakos, wild greens, snails, sheep's cheese, and raki poured for free at the end of every meal whether you want it or not. Eat inland: a taverna in a mountain village is half the price and twice the food.

Rhodes Mid-range

Dodecanese food leans Turkish: pitaroudia chickpea fritters, melekouni honey and sesame bars made for weddings, and octopus hung out to dry before grilling. The wine from Embonas is better than its label suggests.

Corfu Mid-range

Corfiot cooking is Venetian more than Greek: sofrito is veal in garlic and vinegar, pastitsada is rooster on thick pasta, and bourdeto is fish cooked red with paprika. Kumquat liqueur is the island souvenir and better than it sounds.

Paros Mid-range

Gouna — mackerel dried in the sun and grilled — is the island dish; revithada, the Sunday chickpea stew; and the Naoussa fish tavernas, which are the reason to book ahead in August. Parikia’s back streets are half the price of the harbour.

Milos Mid-range

Pitarakia, the cheese pies; ladenia, a Greek pizza from the neighbouring island; and octopus hung to dry outside every taverna in Mandrakia and Klima. Adamas is the port and the dearest place to eat.

Skiathos Mid-range

Fish and the usual island tavernas, with a good scene in the old town. Prices are resort prices in August; the places up the lanes are better and cheaper.

Symi Mid-range

The shrimp are the island’s dish and are fried and eaten whole. Otherwise the harbour tavernas, which are good and know it. Book in August.

Folegandros Mid-range

Matsata, hand-rolled pasta with rabbit or cockerel, in the Ano Meria tavernas; souroto cheese; and the fish at Agali. Small island, few tables, book in August.

Naxos Mid-range

The island feeds itself, which is rare here: potatoes people queue for, graviera cheese, kitron liqueur from the citrus leaves, and meat from the mountains. Cheaper and better than the islands either side of it.

Spetses Mid-range

Fish à la spetsiota, baked with tomato and wine, which is the island’s own; and the tavernas around the old harbour rather than at Dapia. Everything is dearer than the mainland.

Hydra Expensive

Fish at Kamini rather than on the harbour, where you pay for the view; and the amygdalota almond sweets. Everything arrives by boat, so nothing is cheap.

Santorini Very expensive

Try the island specialities: tomatokeftedes (tomato fritters), fava, and white aubergine. Amoudi Bay below Oia has the best fresh fish, though not the cheapest.

The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.

The guides in Greece

white and brown concrete houses on mountain near sea during daytimeSantoriniGreeceWhite villages on the rim of a drowned volcanoacropolis of athens at golden hourAthensGreeceAncient ruins above a restless modern citya boat floating on top of a body of waterMykonosGreeceWhite cubes, windmills and the loudest beach clubs in the Aegean, with the sacred island of Delos next doorThe turquoise shallows and headland of Balos lagoon on the north-west coast of CreteCreteGreeceAn island big enough to have its own mountains, its own cuisine and its own opinion of Greeceblue and white boat on body of water near green trees during daytimeRhodesGreeceA walled medieval city that people still live in, and three hundred days of sun off the Turkish coastaerial view of orange brick castle near steep rock cliffMeteoraGreeceSix monasteries on top of rock pillars, built where nobody could reach themisland photo during daytimeCorfuGreeceVenetian arcades and cricket in the square, on the greenest island in Greeceaerial photo of bridge near concrete buildingsNaxosGreeceThe biggest Cyclade, with mountain villages, marble quarries and the longest sandy beaches in the islandsA boat moored at sunset in the harbour at Naoussa, ParosParosGreeceThe Cyclades without the price of Santorini: a marble island of white villages, a windsurfing bay, and ferries to everywhereA white rock arch over turquoise water on the Milos coastMilosGreeceA volcanic island of seventy beaches, none of them alike: white rock carved by the sea, a fishing village with boat garages under the houses, and the Venus de Milo came from hereSwimmers in the turquoise water under the white cliffs of ZakynthosZakynthosGreeceThe shipwreck in a white cove that every Greek poster shows, blue caves along the cliffs, and loggerhead turtles nesting on the bay at the other endA wooden bench on the waterfront at Skiathos townSkiathosGreeceSixty beaches on a small green island, an airport where the planes come in over the road, and the pine forest behind the most photographed sand in the AegeanThe ancient theatre at Delphi on the mountainsideDelphiGreeceThe place the Greeks called the navel of the world: a sanctuary on a mountainside above a sea of olive trees, where the oracle spoke for a thousand yearsBougainvillea over a blue-shuttered white house in the Cyclades, IosIosGreeceAn island with two reputations: a hill village that parties until dawn, and a coast of empty beaches and a poet’s grave that almost nobody walks toThe houses of Assos on their headland above the sea, KefaloniaKefaloniaGreeceThe biggest Ionian island: an underground lake you row across, a beach between white cliffs that is on every calendar, and a mountain with wild horses on itA boat below the white cliffs of the Lefkada west coastLefkadaGreeceAn island you drive onto across a floating bridge, with the most photographed beaches in Greece under white cliffs on the west coastThe small islet of Kastri off the coast of KosKosGreeceA flat island you cycle across, with a Roman city in the middle of the town, Hippocrates’ plane tree, and Turkey close enough to seeA blue door in a white wall in the upper town at SymiSymiGreeceA harbour of neoclassical houses in ochre and blue stacked up both sides of a bay, five hundred steps from the port to the old town, and shrimp you eat wholeA whitewashed chapel wall and steps against the sea, SkopelosSkopelosGreeceA green island of pine and plum orchards where they filmed the chapel on the rock, with a harbour town of slate roofs and almost no package tourismHydra town from above, red roofs stacked around the harbourHydraGreeceAn island with no cars at all: everything moves by donkey or on foot, a harbour of stone mansions built by shipowners, and Athens an hour and a half awayA wooden boat on calm water below the pines at SpetsesSpetsesGreeceA pine-covered island of shipowners’ mansions and horse-drawn carriages, where cars are mostly banned and Athens is two hours by boatThessaloniki from the air, the city packed along its gulfThessalonikiGreeceGreece’s second city and the one Greeks say eats best: a Roman rotunda, Byzantine churches, a waterfront to walk at sunset, and a student population that never goes to bedA clear turquoise beach fringed with pines in HalkidikiHalkidikiGreeceThree peninsulas off Thessaloniki: one for the beaches, one for the pine forest and the quiet, and one that is a monastic republic women may not enterA boat on still water below the mountains at NafplioNafplioGreeceThe first capital of modern Greece: a Venetian old town under two castles, with a third on an islet in the bay and Mycenae and Epidaurus down the roadThe re-erected Ionic columns of the Philippeion at Ancient OlympiaOlympiaGreeceWhere the games were held for a thousand years: a sanctuary in a green river valley, the original stadium you can still run in, and the Hermes of Praxiteles in the museumThe rock of Monemvasia rising out of the sea, its town along the baseMonemvasiaGreeceA Byzantine town on a rock joined to the mainland by a causeway, invisible from the shore, with no cars inside and a church at the top of the cliffA lane of white houses with tables out under a flowering tree, SifnosSifnosGreeceThe island Greeks go to for the food: a chef whose cookbook shaped the country, three hundred chapels, and a footpath network you can cross the island onThe sun setting over the ridge and the sea at FolegandrosFolegandrosGreeceA village on a 200-metre cliff with the sea straight down from the square, almost no beaches you can drive to, and the quietest evening in the CycladesA green headland above a still bay on KarpathosKarpathosGreeceA long thin island between Crete and Rhodes where a mountain village still speaks a dialect with words Homer used, and the wind makes it a kitesurfing capitalThe town of Skala on its bay below the mountain, PatmosPatmosGreeceThe island where Revelation was written, in a cave you can still go into, under a monastery that looks like a fortress and rules the skylineThe limestone walls of the Vikos gorge above the trees in ZagoriZagoriGreeceForty-six stone villages in the mountains of Epirus, linked by arched packhorse bridges, above a gorge that is among the deepest in the worldA village of tiled roofs along the water below Mount PelionPelionGreeceThe mountain of the centaurs: cobbled villages in chestnut forest on one side, empty Aegean beaches on the other, and a narrow-gauge train between themA fishing boat on clear water off the coast of SamosSamosGreeceA green island a mile from Turkey, with a tunnel dug through a mountain in the sixth century BC, the sweet wine it exports, and Pythagoras born here