Greece was such a highly anticipated place to visit for us. In the media, you can find so many beautiful pictures of breathtaking places, and stories of how amazing the country and the islands are that we just couldn’t wait to get there and see it ourselves! And because Greece is often talked about, we felt like we knew enough to travel there, but consequently, we weren’t very much prepared. It wasn’t the worst thing but there were some aspects that I think would have helped us if we would have researched before. So let’s dive into 8 things to know before traveling to mainland Greece!
Disclaimer: These tips don’t necessarily cover all areas of travel as we traveled with a motorhome and didn’t encounter public transport between towns and experiences with hotels or other accommodations. But I hope that these tips will be helpful regardless if you are a vanlifer or any other type of traveler.
Siesta
Let’s start with the most unique thing about Greece – if you’re wandering around the cities in the middle of the day, you might find that many places are closed for a few hours during the day. It might not be usual in bigger cities and the capital, Athens, but in smaller ones, it is very common. The reason why Greeks practice siesta and take a few hours away from work in the middle of the day is mainly because of the heat that can be very harsh in the summertime. Interestingly, we traveled around Greece in wintertime and still encountered siesta in smaller cities.
Highway tolls
If you’re planning on traveling around Greece with a vehicle, keep in mind that the main highways have tolls and they charge the price based on the size of the vehicle, not weight. We traveled with a motorhome which is of course higher than usual cars but the weight is the same – under 3.5 tons but we needed to pay the tolls from a bigger vehicle category. The difference actually in a few places was drastic, at some points we paid even three times more than normal cars did.
Criminal activity
To be truthful, while we traveled with our motorhome and stayed in multiple cities and places, there were times that we didn’t feel safe at all and there was even an incident when several young men stopped by our car and asked for cigarettes, gas, and then money and seemed to not want to leave us alone. Overall, thankfully, nothing bad happened to us but still, it wasn’t very comfortable. In many parking reviews in several places in Greece, we read about breaking into cars, and Athens, being a very beautiful and historically fascinating city, has also a reputation for some criminal activity and theft.
Camping
Greece is the perfect place to camp in beautiful spots by the beach, nature, and wonderful towns as well as a lot of places are free of cost. During our trip, we didn’t pay any cent for parking and we stayed in the most popular destinations on the mainland as well as in various places directly by the beach, even by a wonderful hot spring and in the mountains.
Gas stations
I would advise you to be careful in gas stations. It wasn’t very common, but we still encountered this a few times when filling up our gas tank. In Greece you don’t fill up gas yourself but rather the gas station workers do it for you, it is also very common in other Balkan countries. But when we told how much gas we wanted to fill up, at times they put a higher amount in the pump display than you asked for originally, for us to pay more.
Internet
We had a Vodafone prepaid SIM card which cost 24 Euros and included 50 GB of data for a month. Later on, we downloaded the Vodafone app and there was a limited-time discounted offer of 3.96 Euro for 20 days of unlimited data. That was an amazing option for us but the connection was so slow in cities, not to mention in more rural places. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any better and affordable alternative.
Water
Filling up a motorhome’s water tank isn’t a problem at all – water is accessible at almost every gas station and is considered to be clean but for drinking, we still bought water in grocery stores since it’s not something we want to risk with. Greece was the only country in the Balkan region where we could easily fill up water so that was a big plus for vanlife there.
Cash or credit card?
In most places, you can pay by credit card but in some places, only cash is accepted. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any ATM that wouldn’t charge an extra 2 or 3 Euros per withdrawal but it of course depends on the credit card that you own. We used both Mastercard and Visa and from both of them an extra fee was charged therefore I would recommend paying mostly by credit card but taking some cash for rare occasions when credit cards wouldn’t be accepted.
Even though some points in this blog post were a bit grave, we enjoyed Greece so much! From the lovely cats all around the country to the astonishing beaches and astounding cities, Greece was definitely worth the visit. We didn’t get a chance to travel to the adorable islands of Greece but hopefully, soon we will get a chance to tick off this from our bucket list as well.
Check out my other blog posts about 9 places to visit in mainland Greece and 13 places to visit in Athens!
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