Product Description

"...overflowing with first-hand knowledge of the country and its idyllic islands...the precise directions included in the guidebook's 1,100-plus pages are especially welcome..." -travel-travel-travel.com

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #914095 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1168 pages

Review
Famously honest. -- Daily Mail, London, UK

For independent travel, the Rough Guides are the most useful source. -- Daily Telegraph, London, UK

The best currrent general guidebook for Greece. -- CondŽ Nast Traveler, USA

About the Author
Written and researched by a team of experienced Rough Guide authors, including two of the founders of Rough Guides, Mark Ellingham and John Fisher.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Where and when to go

There is no such thing as a typical Greek island; each has its distinctive character, appearance, history, flora and even a unique tourist clientele. And the same is true of the mainland provinces. Landscapes vary from the mountainous P'ndhos range and the rainy, dense forests of the P'lion peninsula to the stony deserts of the Mni, from the soft theatricality of the Peloponnesian coastal hills to the poplar-studded plains of Macedonia, from the pine-scented ridges of Skithos and Smos to the wind-blown rocks of the central Aegean. The inky plume of cypress, the silver green of olive groves, the purplish outline of distant hills, an expanse of shimmering cobalt sea: these are the enduring and unfailingly pleasing motifs of the Greek landscape.

Most places and people are far more agreeable, and resolutely Greek, outside the peak period of early July to the end of August, when soaring temperatures and crowds of foreigners and locals alike can be overpowering. You won't miss out on warm weather if you come in June or September, excellent times almost everywhere but particularly in the islands. An exception to this pattern, however, is the north-mainland coast - notably the Halkidhik' peninsula - and the islands of Samothrki and Thssos, which only really operate during July and August. In October you might hit a stormy spell, especially in western Greece or in the mountains, but for most of that month the "summer of yios Dhim'trios" (the Greek equivalent of Indian summer) prevails, and the southerly Dodecanese and Crete are extremely pleasant. Autumn in general is beautiful; the light is softer, the sea often balmier than the air, and the colours subtler.

December to March are the coldest and least reliable months, though even then there are many fine days of perfect crystal visibility, and the glorious lowland flowers begin to bloom very early in spring. The more northerly latitudes and high altitudes of course endure far colder and wetter conditions, with the mountains themselves under snow from November to May. The mildest winter climate is to be found on Rhodes, or in the southeastern parts of Crete. As spring slowly warms up, April is still uncertain, though superb for wildflowers, green landscapes and photography; by May the weather is more generally predictable, and Crete, the Peloponnese, the Ionian islands and the Cyclades are perhaps at their best, even if the sea is still a little cool for swimming.

Other factors that affect the timing of your Greek travels have to do with the level of tourism and the amenities provided. Service standards, particularly in tavernas, slip under the peak-season pressures, and room rates are at their highest from July to September. If you can only visit during mid-summer, reserve a package well in advance, or plan your itinerary off the beaten track. Explore the less obvious parts of the Peloponnese or the northern mainland, or island- hop with an eye for the more obscure places - where ferries call less than daily and there's no airport.

Out of season, especially between November and April, you have to contend with reduced ferry services to the islands (and non-existent hydrofoils), plus fairly skeletal facilities when you arrive. You will, however, find reasonable service on all the main routes and at least one hotel and taverna open in the port or main town of all but the tiniest isles. On the mainland, winter travel poses no special difficulties except, of course, in mountain villages either cut off by snow or (at weekends especially) monopolized by avid Greek skiers.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant! The best of the Greece books
A terrific guide to both the Greek mainland and the islands. Spent several months trawling around the country, at first with several guide books, Fodors, Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, etc., but finally found that the Rough Guide knew the country best, and made for a more entertaining travel companion, so I ditched the other books about three weeks into the trip. Absolutely the only book for Greece if you (a) like good food and nightlife and (b) have a serious interest in the cultural context of Ancient Greece. Plus their commentary on modern Greek history was very helpful, must admit I didn't know much about it until I arrived.

You can't go wrong with this book.

humorous, informative, and insightful
If you like self-depreciating English humor, you'll like the Rough guide to Greece. This book is densely packed with informative and interpretive pages. Not like the Fodor's, etc. which are mostly pretty pictures and ads disguised as recommendations. Even the most biting commentary turned out to be true. I consider this book to have been crucial to a very sucessful vacation/tour.

Just OK
This review compares the Lonely Plantet Greece (4th Edition) with the Rough Guide Greece (8th edition). We spent 2.5 weeks in July, 2001 in Greece, our first visit, and these were our guide books.
A relucant 4 stars to each, and a slight preference for RG. We certainly found the books serviceable, and they gave us good ideas of where in Greece we wanted to go. But they were much less valuable in their listings for individual destinations. They were the least valuable compared to the other LP and RG travel books we've used (Portugal, Italy, Thailand, Tokyo).

As usual, they both overstate their hotel rankings which to me make sense only if you've been sleeping out on the beach from necessity, and now have finally scraped some money together for a room. An exagerration, but I've lost patience with gushing praise for facilities which are usually no better than serviceable and sometimes less than that. And, we're not into spending money on fancy accommodations. Occassionaly the books are on the money, but often not.

On the smaller islands RG usually had more accommodation listings, but occassionally LP did. There were at least two instances when LP had none, just saying that rooms were available.

The ferry schedules in the books, pretty much consistent between them, bore little relation to reality, even though we were there in the high season.

I want to complete with my usual gripe about these and other guide books: we don't know which restaurants and hotels were actually visited by the writers (and by which one) and when. To paraphrase from my review of RG Portugal:

LP is out front in saying that its reviewers do not stay at all the hotels or eat at all the restaurants they list. I would like it if the reviews would be initialized by the reviewers with the date. This would allow us to learn each reviewer's tastes and standards, not to mention seeing which places they actually visited.

One LP writer (not I think an author of this book) in discussing restaurants wrote: "As one of those LP writers I can tell you that it is not physically possible to eat even a 'little bit of a meal' in each of those restaurants :-) What we all tend to do is eat at a broad cross-section within the norms of natural eating times and visit the other restaurants and talk to the owner or even the diners if it can be done discretely. In the same vein we don't sleep at every hotel!"

Talk to the owners for your evaluation! Says it all.