Make Your Next Trip Extraordinary

Souvlaki and a beer in the Athens Central Food market.

A tour of the meat and fish market included a stop to enjoy souvlaki. Photo: Tracy Troemel.

We used Wendy Perrin services for our trip to Athens, Greece 27 August – 2 September 2024. Mina our travel coordinator contacted us promptly to begin the planning process.

We set up concierge pick-up at the airport, which whisked us through immigration & customs without a wait straight to our waiting driver. This was a wonderful service after a 9-hour flight.

Our hotel in Athens city center, Elias Ermou, was in a wonderful location. Restaurants & neighborhoods were walkable from there. We would stay there again because of the location & rooftop restaurant with included breakfast buffet viewing the Acropolis was lovely.

We started the next day with an arranged walking tour by Izmini to the Acropolis. She met us in the hotel lobby & we began our walk. She had the tickets for the Acropolis & museum ready for our adventure. She was very knowledgeable & friendly. She was very thoughtful with rest & water breaks during our almost 5-mile walk.

The next day we had a good tour with Harys. He also was prompt in meeting us at our hotel. We had Greek coffee, an olive oil tasting, bougatsa pastries, and a tour of the meat & fish market where we also had souvlaki with mustard. It was an entertaining, filling day.

On the third day, we had a neighborhood tour with Elizabeth. This tour was very good in that she was able to tie both the first Acropolis tour & food tour together. It was the bow on a present. She was very personable & thorough in her descriptions of the neighborhoods we walked in & their history. Even though it wasn’t specifically part of this, she included some street art stories as we passed by them.

We had 2 other tours planned, but after 3 days of walking, we canceled them as we realized we had overextended ourselves. We were overeager in our initial planning.

Day of departure, our driver was prompt & efficient in getting us to the airport.

We just had the most amazing trip experience in Greece! We thank Mina and her team for designing a trip to meet our expectations from lodging to experiences. There was no stone unturned and every step of the journey went off without a glitch.
Our drivers and guides were so personable, interesting and fun!

We loved Naxos the most—Villa Mirandi was wonderful—felt like we were away for a week after only a few hours. We enjoyed our food tour and farm experience—Naxos is a place we would love to return!

Staying in the village of Megalochori in Santorini was perfect because we preferred being away from the commercial areas. We ate with the locals and our hotel accommodated us in transportation wherever and whenever we requested!

Thank you again—and we look forward to our next trip with you!!

Mina and her group planned and executed a 16-day memorable trip to Croatia and Greece. On our trip the hotels had amazing views, and the itinerary was a fantastic mix of sightseeing and relax time. The two individual boat trips, one in Croatia and one in Greece, were highlights of our trips. In Croatia we visited islands off of Split and had a fish lunch grilled at an island where we had tendered. In Santorini we had a personal boat tour of the coast where our captain and first mate stopped to cook us a wonderful meal that rivaled those at some of the top restaurants where we had eaten. Mina’s dining group provided links to review for dining reservations before we left. Their options were delicious, with some having unbelievable dinner views. They made the reservations and also reconfirmed as required. The logistics group checked us in to our transfer flights and sent our boarding passes to the hotels. This saved us time to enjoy our surroundings. Mina’s connections at the hotels were great and the treats waiting for us delicious. All of our guides and drivers were courteous, informative and a joy to interact with and learn of local customs.

With travel there is always the possibility of delays in flights and in luggage. We experienced several on our journey. Our flight to Zagreb had a missed connection in Frankfurt because it was late leaving the U.S. We had booked that flight through Cranky Concierge and they were on top of things, getting seats held for us on the next flight to Zagreb from Frankfurt and instructing us what to do. Mina’s group worked out with our driver and our tour guide to delay our sightseeing for the next flight so there was no stress or rush for us. From Croatia to Greece our luggage was delayed until the next day, which caused us to have to wait in a line for baggage claim. Mina’s group again worked out with our driver and guide to wait for us and still provide the tour of Athens we had planned. When our ferry was an hour late from Paros to Santorini again there was no impact for us as our driver and guide waited patiently for our arrival. It was so reassuring knowing we were not being impacted by what we could see and do because Mina’s people were so flexible with us. Coming home from Santorini the personal escort to get us through the Athens airport was also so helpful to make our connection to the U.S. When we were in the Newark airport waiting for our final connection home again our flight was delayed but Cranky Concierge was monitoring and keeping us updated and letting us know that was still our best option.

When you have travel/baggage delays, having fixers makes all the difference. These delays did not impact our wonderful trip as we still saw and did all planned. I highly recommend Mina and her group, and also Cranky Concierge.

This was a fabulous trip — we spent one week on Crete and two weeks in the Peloponnese and Central Greece. We were very pleased with the services offered by the travel planner and they added a lot of value. For example, the transfers to and from the airport were terrific. We were very happy with most of our hotels. It was great to have someone to call for help — for example, there were floods in Central Greece during our stay and we weren’t certain if the road from Delphi to Meteora would be open when we were traveling, so it was terrific to have someone to call. We appreciated having dedicated tour guides at all of the ancient sites and at Momenvasia; most of them were terrific. We especially loved the Minos Beach Art Hotel in Agios Nikolaus — I wish we had had an extra day there! We also loved our hotels in Chania and Momenvasia. We would not have been able to plan this extraordinary trip on our own!

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