Greece: Athens, Delphi, Meteora, Olympia and Nafplio

Fly into Athens International Airport (ATH), about 35 km east of the centre, and a driver meets you in arrivals for the drive to your hotel; plan to land by about 3 pm. At about 5 pm your See Sight Tours guide meets the group for a short briefing on the week, then we walk. From Syntagma Square we watch the Evzones, the presidential guard in kilts and pompom shoes, change at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We cut through the shade of the National Garden to the Zappeion, a 19th-century exhibition hall whose round colonnaded courtyard is usually open to walk through, and on to the all-marble Panathenaic Stadium, where the first modern Olympics opened in 1896. Past Hadrian's Arch and the columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, we climb into the lanes of Plaka as the light goes.

Temps libre : Free until the 5 pm briefing

Activité : About 2 hours of easy walking on city pavements.

Option plus facile : Skip the short climb up the hill at Thermopylae and read the battle from the monument by the road.

Temps libre : Evening free in Kalambaka

Activité : About 2 hours on foot on the Acropolis, on steep, polished marble with no shade. The day's drive is about 4 hours, broken by lunch.

At 8 am a short drive takes us to Kastraki, the village tucked under the tallest rocks, and we walk up the old stone path the monks used before there was a road: a steady uphill walk of roughly 45 to 60 minutes, with the towers closing in above. We reach the Great Meteoron as its doors open at about 9 am, before the first coaches. Founded in the 14th century on a rock more than 600 m above sea level, it is the largest of the six monasteries still lived in, with a frescoed church, the old kitchen and a long view down to the plain. Next door, Varlaam keeps the rope-and-net winch that once hauled up supplies. A local guide tells the story of the hermits who first lived in the caves here, and of how Meteora became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988.

Option plus facile : Ride the van up to the monastery doors instead of walking; the monasteries themselves still have up to a few hundred steps.

Option plus active : Walk back down to Kastraki after the visits instead of taking the van, on the same stone path.

Temps libre : Afternoon and evening free in Kalambaka

Activité : Dress for the monasteries: skirts below the knee for women, long trousers for men, shoulders covered; wraps are usually lent at the door. The walk up is a steady uphill walk of roughly 45 to 60 minutes on an old stone path. Day 3 never falls on a Tuesday or Friday, when the Great Meteoron and Varlaam close.

One more monastery before we go: at about 9 am we visit whichever of the two nunneries, Roussanou or St Stephen's, is open that day. St Stephen's is reached by a short bridge, with no long stair. Then we drive south, about 3 and a quarter hours and 235 km, back across the Thessaly plain, past Lamia and up into the mountains to Delphi, which sits at about 570 m on the slopes of Mount Parnassus above a sea of olive trees running down to the Gulf of Corinth.

Option plus facile : After the museum, ride the van down to the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia and back instead of walking along the road, or rest in the village.

Activité : About 1.5 hours on foot, mostly in the museum; the path down to the Tholos is short but steep on the way back up.

At 8 am we are at the gate of the Sanctuary of Apollo with our guide, well before the first coaches from Athens, about 180 km away, arrive. The Sacred Way zigzags up past the rebuilt Treasury of the Athenians to the Temple of Apollo, where the Pythia gave the oracle's answers, and on to the theatre with its view across the valley. The stadium is higher still, a stiff climb that is worth it for the quiet. Delphi was listed by UNESCO in 1987.

Option plus facile : Stop at the theatre and skip the climb to the stadium; wait in the shade below the Temple of Apollo.

Option plus active : Climb on past the theatre to the stadium at the top of the site, where the Pythian Games were run.

Temps libre : Late afternoon and evening free in Olympia

Activité : About 2 hours on foot at Delphi on steep, uneven paths and steps.

Olympia opens at 8 am and we are there with a licensed guide while it is still cool under the pines, in the green valley where the Kladeos stream meets the Alpheios river. The Games were held here from 776 BC. We walk past the columns of the palaestra, where wrestlers trained, the workshop where Pheidias made the gold-and-ivory statue of Zeus, the fallen drums of the Temple of Zeus, and the Temple of Hera, where the Olympic flame is still lit before each Games. Then through the vaulted tunnel into the stadium: the track, about 192 m long, is still there, and you can run it. The museum holds the pediment sculptures of the Temple of Zeus, the Nike of Paionios and the Hermes attributed to Praxiteles.

Temps libre : Dinner free in Nafplio

Activité : About 2.5 hours on foot at Olympia, on flat gravel paths with some shade.

We leave Nafplio at 8 am and reach Mycenae at about 8:30, soon after it opens and well before the coaches. In Homer's telling this was Agamemnon's citadel, and it was at its height around 1350 to 1200 BC. With a licensed guide we walk in under the Lion Gate, past Grave Circle A, where Heinrich Schliemann found gold funeral masks in 1876, and up to the palace on the summit, then down the road to the Treasury of Atreus, a beehive tomb with a stone dome about 13 m high. About an hour's drive takes us east to Epidaurus, the sanctuary of Asclepius, the healing god, and its 4th-century BC theatre, which seats about 13,000: climb to the top row while someone on the stage drops a coin, and hear it land.

Option plus facile : At Mycenae, stay in the lower citadel and skip the uneven path up to the palace; at Epidaurus, watch from the lower rows of the theatre.

Option plus active : In the free afternoon, climb the long stone stairway to the Palamidi fortress, built by the Venetians in the early 18th century about 216 m above the town; entry included.

Temps libre : Afternoon free in Nafplio

Activité : About 3 hours on foot over the two sites, on rough stone paths and steps; the Palamidi stair is several hundred steps.

We leave Nafplio at about 8:30 and drive an hour north to the Corinth Canal, cut through the isthmus between 1881 and 1893. Walk out on the bridge and look straight down the narrow cut, about 6.4 km long, to the water far below. Then it is about an hour and a quarter into Athens and the National Archaeological Museum, where we finish the story we began at Mycenae yesterday: the gold masks and cups from the shaft graves, including the one Schliemann called the Mask of Agamemnon. Your guide also takes you to the Antikythera mechanism, a bronze geared calculator from the 2nd or 1st century BC, and the bronze god from Artemision, poised to throw. Small-group dates keep day 8 off Tuesdays, when the museum opens only at 1 pm.

Option plus facile : For a flight before about 6 pm, we drive straight from Nafplio to the airport, about 2 hours, with a stop at the canal on the way.

Activité : Book a flight leaving after about 6 pm to see the museum. The museum opens only at 1 pm on Tuesdays, so small-group dates keep day 8 off a Tuesday; a private trip ending on a Tuesday visits at 1 pm, reaches the airport at about 4 pm and needs a flight after about 7 pm.