Private Drivers in Athens

I will be travelling on the Grand Princess, Venice to Barcalona from June 8th with my mother and aunt (75 and 72) plus 16 yearold daughter. I prefer a private driver/guide as their mobility is somewhat limited and they find keeping up with large groups taxing. Can you recommend agents that I can use for Athens. I have made contacts for Turkey and Italy based on the posts on this website, but need someone for Athens. Thanks

We are using a gentleman named Antonis Protogeros <aprotogeros@DestinationGreece.com>

He was recommended to us by our friends travel agent. We have booked him for 3 days Sept..12-14th for 3 couples. He was also recommended on the Oceania cruise board by a past passanger. He is very prompt in answering our e mails..

David ..whyme71842@aol.com

We were very satisfied with Spiros from http://*****

I second Spiro.

Andee and Steve - How much did you pay with Spiro? How long was the tour? What sights did you see?

Just be aware that if you book with Spiros, you may not have him. We booked with him over a year in advance and he assured our group that he would be our driver. Well..we got to Athens and guess who didn't show? You guessed it! His friend Michael was our guide for the day. We also had corresponded on several occasions and never once did he let us know there would be someone other than himself guiding us.

We used Spiros twice. In the summer 2004 he took us and another couple all around Athens, stopping at all the typical tourist sights, including the changing of the guard. We then traveled down the Sounian coast, stopped for lunch at a sea-side restaurant and continued to the Temple of Poseiden. When we returned to Athens, we continued our tour, stopping at various places and spending some time at the Plaka where my wife saw a bracelet that she liked, but couldn't make her mind up to purchase. We then returned to the ship (Millennium). My wife was sorry that she had passed up the bracelet and after dropping our friends at the ship, tooks us back to the Plaka where we made the purchase, and then he returned us again back to the ship. He didn't charge us anything extra for this additional roundtrip between Piraeus and Athens. I don't remember what the four of us paid for the full-day tour, but is was much more reasonable that equivalent full-day tours in Naples and the French Riviera that we took. This past summer, off of the Grand Princess, he took just the two of us on a tour to Corinth, Epidaurus, and ancient Mycenae in the Pelopenese area. We stopped at many places, and had lunch at a wonderful sea-side restaurant in a resort town whose name escapes me right now. Since it was just the two of us, our cost per person was more than the previous year, but again, I can't remember exactly what we paid for the full day.

If anyone can remember the cost of what they paid for their Athens tour, that would be really helpful for comparison to other quotes we may get.

Hi Kelly,

We're using Paul from Greece taxi: http://www.greecebytaxi.com/

There are nine of us, and for a full day in Athens in a 14 seat minibus the cost is 450 euros.

I don't know if that is good or not, but he does have a following on these boards and he could accommodate all of us.

Hope that helps.

Mari

For two of us, the cost was 125 Euro. He picked us up at the ship at 8AM, took us on a very complete tour of Athens and dropped us at our hotel at 1 PM.

Andee - Who was that with? Paul or another driver from Greece By Taxi? Or was it another operator altogether? Was it just the 2 of you in the vehicle? That's what we want and were getting quoted more like $250 or so total.

kellyccz: this is what I said in my post last night,

"We were very satisfied with Spiros from *****"

Today you asked me, "Andee - Who was that with?" The answer is still Spiros.

To answere your other question, there were only the two of us in the cab.

ajpack, the same thing happened to us. I booked Spiros more than a year in advance. When I reconfirmed three months before we sailed that he would be our driver, he actually called to tell me that not only did he not have a record of my reservation but he was already reserved to drive someone else. I sent him copies of our e-mails, but he refused to budge and assigned Michael to us (I insisted on a non-smoking driver). I have a feeling this is something Spiros does regularly.

We had a great time in Athens. There were four of us in a Mercedes sedan (cost 200 euros) and we shifted positions after every stop so everyone had a chance to sit up front and everyone had to sit in the middle of the backseat. We covered a lot of ground in six hours, more than I would have expected. Michael was fine, although his English was heavily accented and it was sometimes difficult to understand him. Nevertheless, I would recommend him. The price was certainly right.

Andee - Sorry about that. My mind was in a million places and I didn't glance back up in the thread enough to see and I don't generally remember exact poster names from the day before. Sorry to make you repeat yourself.

FYI - I just got an answer back from Spiros about booking him in October. He quoted me 230 Euros for either 2 or 4 people. Compared to a lot of the other private tour guides, that's a deal!

If he is already booked, the other quote I got was from Rania - she was 360 Euros for 2 people, 390 for 4 people. Hope this helps!!!

Happy Travels!