The Rough Guide to Greece

We spent two weeks in Greece -- 9 days on the mainland and the Peloponnese, and 6 days on the islands. Not an hour went by that we didn't refer to our Rough Guide! It is packed full of fantastic information and led us in all the right directions. There were a few gems of our trip that I was surprised weren't mentioned in the book, so if you're planning on spending longer than a week on the islands, you may want to consider buying a guidebook specifically written for them. All in all, I recommend this book if you want just one good, general guidebook for Greece.

This is a great book. Very comprehensive and generally accurate. One thing to watch out for though: double check with the tourist office the opening hours of sites before you go. Many sites seem to have shortened their opening hours dramatically. For example, Acropolis in Athens closes at 5 instead of 7 in April. Also in April, Nafplio's Paramidhi castle closes at 2:45 pm instead of 6:30 according to the book. I got there at 3 and was turned away! Other than that and a few minor spelling issues (the book uses Syndagma square even though all English signs in Athens spell it Syntagma), this book is almost perfect. I brought it on a guided tour to Corinth, Mycenae, and Epidauros. It's more helpful than the guide. Especially in Mycenae, the book pointed me to the two tholos outside the wall that most people missed.

We just came back from a 3 weeks, modest-budget, partly backpacking, partly car-rental trip around Rhodes, Crete, and Peloponnese. We deliberately stayed off the beaten tracks as much as possible. We used this guide along with French "Guide du Routard" and Michelin guides. I picked this guide against the Lonely Planet one based on an excellent experience with the Corsica rough guide last year.This Rough Guide was above all very practical -- it simply is amazingly detailed, and what's more, it's mostly right. The rooms , hotels, and restaurants suggested were spot on. Very few outdated entries.This guide also includes much relevant background info on Greek history, politics, food, an so on. This made for a much more interesting trip.The paper was very thin yet high quality, making this guide even more worth its space in my pack.This is definitely not the guide for organized tours -- the authors make no secret of their disdain for package tourism and the spoiling it often brings. But, for the independent traveller, this is the best guide I have found in English or French.

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.

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.