Greece Travel Guide: Essential Tips for Visiting with a Baby

You guys know how much I love DIY and working on my home, but the one thing that would sway me to spend money somewhere other than my house is travel. When I got a flight deal email for Greece at the same time as we were planning how to celebrate Alex’s 30th birthday, we clearly had to jump on it and start a feta line item in our monthly budget. So, here’s our Greece travel guide.

We spent a week in Greece eating, swimming, sweating, eating some more, admiring the views, taking basic bitch photos and generally loving life, even with a toddler in tow. It was a pretty badass way to celebrate a milestone birthday.

Greece travel guide

Athens

To be totally honest, our time in Athens was kind of ruined by the fact our airline lost all of our luggage for the first 24 hours of our trip. I’m one of those people that shows up to a month long vacation with a carry-on, but now I’ve got an 18-month-old and a husband, I need to pack more and it kind of kills me inside for exactly this reason.

We packed one duffel bag to check, an umbrella stroller, and a carry-on suitcase, but the airline made us check everything at one of our layovers leaving us with only my purse and a diaper bag.

Luckily for us, Greek people love babies and we literally skipped the hundreds-of-people-long customs line to go to the front because we had a baby with us and though we thought it was a fluke, everyone in Greece was so kind and accommodating to kids and we were ushered to the front of lines everywhere we went.

Still, not having bags that first day was a challenge and we had to spend the morning buying clothes in case we didn’t get our luggage back at all, so I ended up with a muumuu that looked like I rolled straight outta Uncle Joe’s bed on my way to cash in a golden ticket.

We had tickets to the Acropolis that we didn’t get to use because we were delayed in the bag hunt, so that was disappointing, but the Athens Starlight Hotel where we stayed was in a great central location for sightseeing, surrounded by cute alleyways filled with shops and restaurants that would be a great launching point for a longer stay in the city.

The islands: Paros

We flew out to Paros on our second day where we were finally reunited with our luggage and clean underwear. What a concept. After doing a ton of research, we landed on Paros as somewhere with all the typical Greek island postcard views like the white and blue buildings, but with a relatively flat landscape and lowkey vibe that’s more aligned with family vacations.

We loved it. Alex and I both agreed it was our favorite stop of the trip. We stayed at the Madaky Hotel in Naoussa which is only a few minutes’ walk away from the water and has the friendliest staff. When we checked in and told them our bags were missing, they literally offered up family members’ clothes for Eleanor if we needed, so yeah, they were incredible.

We spent our first day on the island wandering around the beautiful little alleyways, shopping and eating. They’re flat and wide enough to use a stroller which is a big plus for us, and everywhere we went was so family friendly and accommodating to a baby. I honestly don’t even remember all the restaurants we ate at but it feels like in our two days there we tried them all and you really can’t go wrong with any.

The front desk lady at our hotel recommended a place called Λουκουμάδες Το Παραδοσιακό to get these wild donut holes covered in melted chocolate and topped with ice cream and it made me love her even more.

On our second day in Naoussa we took the little seabus on the dock (which was €8 per person) out to Kolymbithres beach about 15 minutes away. It had beautiful clear water, but was really crowded by mid-morning. It would’ve been great in our non-parent days when we could bring some snacks and some drinks then spend all day there, but with kids it’s really not worth more than a couple of hours, in our opinion.

Oh, and one last thing, a bakery called Ragoussis Bakery was right by our hotel and had a huge selection of sandwiches, sweets and pastries that we’d definitely recommend.

The islands: Santorini

Ahh, Santorini. The place we spent like $1,000 to go for one night (*insert sweating emoji*), but how could you go to the Greek islands and not visit Santorini?? We took a bus from Naoussa to the port town of Parikia in Paros for about €3 total, then a two-hour ferry over to Santorini.

We only had about an hour in Parikia before our ferry took off but it was also packed full of pretty white alleyways and restaurants that would’ve been cool to explore more. There’s also a big playground right across the road from the port for the kids to get out some energy before the ferry!

In Santorini, we stayed in Oia right at the tip of the island at an incredible hotel called Top Oia. That was our splurge hotel of the trip at about $240 USD for one night, but that view was worth it.

Oia was really deceiving in that when our taxi pulled up we were like ‘okay, sorry, this is clearly a scene from Mad Max not a beautiful fancy tourist destination’, but after climbing more stairs than my calf muscles would like to admit, we reached the picturesque cliffside views.

We did some more alleyway wandering, dodging the influencers taking photos in fancy flowy dresses as we wiped beads of sweat from our brows in the steamy August sun. We now understand why Santorini isn’t dubbed as a very family friendly destination with the cobblestone streets and sharp drops, but luckily Eleanor was happy to mostly wave at passersby from her carrier.

We somehow were lucky enough to get an impromptu seat at a cute little restaurant called Lotza right before sunset, nestled among the ‘reserved’ signs on all the other tables. The food was delicious and actually more affordable than we expected! Our hotel had a huge balcony with an amazing view where we drank at least two more bottles of wine than we should’ve and got late night gyros as we watched people party down below.

We unfortunately had to leave at like 4:30 a.m. the next day for our flight back to Athens, but we made the most of our short time with the Santorini views.

To the mountains: Arachova

Okay, so real talk: This part of the trip I was not expecting to like that much. I wanted to be basic and drink wine on the islands but Alex is more of a history lover and wanted to see some ruins so we compromised and packed in as much as possible into our week in Greece. We rented a car in Athens and continued on for about two hours out of the city to Arachova. It’s a small mountain town that’s a ski resort in the winter, but in the summer it’s a really welcome, like, 10 degrees cooler than Athens.

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We stayed at the Ef Zin Hotel which had a very cabin-like vibe and was really close to all the shops and restaurants nearby. It had high ceilings and a loft for two twin beds above the main area of the room, which is very similar to the design we’re going for in the AirBnb we’re building in our backyard. We ate lunch at the Ταβέρνα ΓΕΦΥΡΑ, which I would have no idea how to pronounce but it’s on the main street right by an incredible view.

The food was so good and felt really homemade, plus we were served a ton of bread and a free dessert by the sweet owner who we both wanted to be our adopted grandpa. We ate gelato and picked up a few sweets from one of the bakeries, and spent the afternoon looking through the little stores along the main street before eating dinner at Oistros which was hands down the best meal of our trip.

We got sausage orzo and lamb in lemon sauce and both were one of the best meals we’ve probably ever had. We went back to the room very full and sleepy.

To the mountains: Delphi/Delfi

We stayed the night in Arachova because it’s really close to Delphi, which is a series of ruins including the Temple of Apollo and historically called the “Center of the Earth” that Alex wanted to see.

We did a guided tour of Delphi (that we booked through GetYourGuide) which we really recommend because otherwise it’s a bunch of rocks with inscriptions you don’t understand. Our tour guide, Georgia, had a lot of history and reconstructions of what the ruins would’ve looked like in ancient times, which is much appreciated for this visual learner.

It was really hot and quite a few steps to get up to the top of the mountainside where the village was, but it was worth it if not for the history then the incredible view up there. Of course our child wanted to throw the small rocks she found along the side of the ruins instead of looking at the rocks we cared about, but whatever keeps her quiet, I guess.

A quick pitstop: Paralia

Speaking of being pleasantly surprised, Paralia was a close second in our favorite places of the trip – and something you won’t see on many others’ Greece travel guide. It was a last-minute day trip we decided to do on the way back to Athens because our original plans of going out to Olympia were canceled due to the wildfires, but it ended up being only about an hour’s detour from our original route back to Athens.

It’s a really small tourist town in a very unassuming area that looks a little like a horror movie until you get about 90 seconds away from the water. There was one small town we went through where dogs barked and chased the car away and we didn’t see a single human despite it being like 10 a.m. on a Saturday, weird.

Anyway, Paralia itself was beautiful. The water was some of the clearest we’ve ever seen and it gave off real lake vibes despite the fact it was part of a bay. The water was calm, there was plenty of beach to stay spread out from other people and the little taverns dotting the coastline had diners practically sitting on the beach as they ate.

We only spent a couple of hours there getting lunch and swimming, but it didn’t seem like much else was going on in the town other than the beach and restaurants, but what else do you need? Seriously, we couldn’t get over how beautiful the water was.

Back to Athens and home again

We made it back to Athens late in the afternoon and stayed at an apartment near the airport we wouldn’t recommend (including a very Steve Irwin-like battle I had with a broken showerhead spraying water all over the bathroom) but the quick trip to Paralia really gave us the perfect last day that made up for it.

Food

I’m just going to go ahead and break this one out as its own part of our Greece travel guide because it deserves a moment to shine. We tried so many amazing foods beyond the gyros and baklava we thought of when we thought of Greece.

After making the mistake a few times early in the trip, we discovered the Greeks feed you way too much to justify ordering three meals for the three of us, so we usually ordered an appetizer, a salad and a main and shared it between all of us instead and that was plenty filling (and budget friendly!). Doing it this way, we spent about €30 per meal, and that usually included a drink each.

The number one thing that changed our lives was feta wrapped in phyllo pastry and topped with honey. I’m not sure what it’s called but we ordered it everywhere we saw it and it is incredible. I can’t believe we live in a world where this exists.

Actually, I guess we’re just big appetizer fans in general because the other dishes we recommend trying are any kind of ball – potato ball, meatball, zucchini ball, tomato ball – they’re all so good. Greek salads are kind of obvious, but here they’re served with an entire block of feta on top because Greek people are my people. Alex, who traditionally hates salads so much he hides veggies in his smoothies, was even won over.

In our experience, you’re given bread at most meals to start with and a lot of places gave us a dessert of some kind on the house like watermelon, Greek yogurt with berries, or even a shot glass of wine once. Also kid tip: most main meals come with fries so if you’ve got a picky eater, you’ll likely be safe just loading them up on those if all else fails.

In all, we loved Greece and would definitely recommend getting on those flight deal email lists (we use Scott’s Cheap Flights and Dollar Flight Club) to get alerted whenever there are cheap fares there, and of course bookmark our Greece travel guide for when you’re planning your trip. It was one of those places on my bucket list but one I assumed was way off because those flights are always so expensive, and I’m so happy we could celebrate Alex entering his 30s in style.

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