Traveling Solo to Greece with EF Ultimate Break

In May of 2022 I left the country for the first time, completely solo. So of course I headed on an ultimate greek island adventure for 17 days! Not only was traveling to Greece with EF Ultimate Break my first experience with a tour company, but it was also my first time out of the country! And I would 100% do it exactly the same way again! 

Before I dive into this blog further, I want to disclose that I now am an ambassador with EF Ultimate Break. I do not make money from this. I signed up for their ambassador program because this trip was so amazing and I am planning to continue to travel with them. In fact, I am even coordinating a trip to Turkey in 2024 with them! Like I said, being an ambassador does not mean I make money from talking, writing, or posting about these trips. But it does mean that I can offer first time EF Ultimate Break travelers $100 off their first trip with the discount code “UAIrene100”. Also for convenience, you may see me refer to “EF Ultimate Break” and “EFUB’, they are the same thing, just an abbreviation. 

You may also notice a few items I mention in this post have a link. These links are affiliate links.They do not cost you extra to shop with them. They do send a few pennies my way which help me continue to share blogs. Now with that all out in the open, let’s talk about the trip!

TIME 

I went to Greece in May and I did this with purpose. From the research I had done online I found that May is juuuust before the busy tourist season hits in Greece which is exactly why I went then. I really wanted to explore the smaller locations and not feel too overwhelmed. Many locals told me that even when it gets busy you can find space to breathe. More importantly, every local told me October is the best time to visit. It has a similar slow tourist vibe, but the water is much warmer. The perks of warm summer water without the crowds. I do hope to go back one day and visit the islands I did not make it to so I did keep this in mind. 

When it came to the schedule and speed of the trip it was perfect. Everything went smoothly and it didn’t feel like I was “missing out” on anything at each island we visited. The schedule is not something you are super tied to with EFUB, which is why I like them. The main thing to remember if you have to be at the boats and buses with the group to stay on schedule. There is a lot of independence with EFUB trips so even on days where you might want to take a nap or relax a bit, you totally can! 

ACCOMMODATIONS AND TRANSPORTATION  

One of my biggest reasons for choosing to travel with a tour company is because I always feel lost when trying to find accommodations and transportation when traveling, even in the US! EFUB completely takes care of all of this which was a huge relief for me! I spend most of my days shooting and communicating with clients. I did not want to cut into that time. Having EFUB even helped me stay on schedule with my work because they could take care of that. You can choose not to do this if you’d like when booking, but I had EFUB book my flights for me. This worked perfectly! Coming from the bay area I was able to leave SFO, fly into Toronto. From Toronto I went right over to Athens.

My flights home were just as easy too! I flew from Athens to Munich and then right to SFO. My flight from Munich was completely full but it still was such a breeze since I knew it was all taken care of for me. While traveling in Greece, EFUB had private buses for us and our public ferry tickets sorted for when we went island to island. It was great!

If I was nervous about anything, it was where I was staying. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust EF, it was that I had heard so many horror stories from people in my life about bed bugs in Europe that I was worried I would find them in every place I stayed. Much to my relief, this didn’t happen at all and every place we stayed was lovely. 

LOCATIONS 

My trip started in Athens and then headed to the Islands. The official name of the tour I went on is “Ultimate Greek islands” and it is not joking around with that name. After a bit of time in Athens (enough to see the city and Acropolis), we headed to Chania, Crete.

Crete was my favorite of all the islands and I hope to go back one day and spend more time exploring Crete. We started in Chania then headed over to Heraklion, Crete. In Heraklion you can find the Heraklion Archaeological Museum which I highly recommend spending a few hours at! After our time in Crete we then took the ferry over to Santorini. May is a fantastic time to visit Santorini and Mykonos. As they are two of the most popular islands, they get a large bulk of the tourism, and for good reason, they are beautiful. This is where I was thankful that I did this tour before the busiest of tourist seasons.

Santorini was just starting to see large crowds of tourists as my tour was leaving for Ios. Ios is a beautiful island that I think many people miss when they think of the Greek Islands. There are many aspects of Ios that remind me of Mykonos. If you visit Ios Far Out is a great beach club to stay at. They were one of the only locations to have free beach casitas. I imagine during prime tourist season this is quite the hot spot. After Ios we went to Paros, which is an unreal island. Paros has some of the clearest blue water I have ever seen in my life. In the future if I am to visit other islands, both Crete and Paros are on my list to visit again.

From Paros we went to Mykonos. In Mykonos we actually ran into another EFUB group which was so much fun. After some time in Mykonos we headed back to Athens which is where we had our goodbye dinner (one of my favorite aspects of EFUB tours) and we flew out the next morning. 

PACKING TIPS

My trip was 17 days so I planned to do laundry. I did not want to be carrying around and worrying about a bunch of stuff, and this worked perfectly. For my trip Santorini was our halfway mark and it was super easy to do laundry there. Most laundromats will have you drop your laundry off, so plan to stop by in the morning, and you pick up clean and folded the next day. Even if your trip is shorter than 17 days, this is a great way to travel lightly. 

Some things I did not want to purchase while I was there were sunscreen and shoes. I figured since these are tourist spots the price would be high if I needed them so I brought things I knew would last.

I am a big fan of SunBum sunscreen so I bought that, but I also brought a bit of Black Girl Sunscreen since my bottle was almost empty and I knew I would use it up on the trip. For my future trips I plan to use this stick sunscreen since I know for sure it is reef safe.

As for shoes I kept it extremely simple. I ended up wearing Verra Tevas for most of the trip. These specific ones have lived with me since I was in high school. They explored Arizona with me while I was in College and they only recently started to show their age while I was in Thailand in October (monsoon season). I recently purchased the “more hardcore” version of the shoe, the Tirra, to replace my old ones.

PHOTO GEAR

When it comes to camera gear I was very conflicted. I wanted to bring a quality DSLR but I don’t necessarily want to look like a tourist. I ended up bringing a Canon 80d with an 18-135mm lens. This lens gives me a large range to shoot with but its lowest f-stop is f/3.5. This isn’t necessarily bad but if I wanted to shoot in lowlight a lower f-stop can be nice to have. Overall this lens works great for landscapes, portraits and more. Plus you can find it relatively affordably for EF/EF-S lens mount. For my future trips I plan to experiment with which gear I pack.  I do wish I brought a few film cameras. Greece is just mean to be captured on film!

I also brought the Insta360 GO 2 which is a fun, smaller than an iphone, action camera. The first time I used this was in Greece.It was neat to have quality footage from such a small camera. And the sound quality wasn’t too bad either. I bought the accessories for it as well. I am glad as the case it lives in is not waterproof, just the camera itself. 

When packing dont worry too much. Anything you need you can find in Greece. In fact, I found my face wash while at a shop in Crete! And it was half of the price as it is in the US! I almost bought it all. 

THE SOLO EXPERIENCE 

I have never been someone who is nervous to do things by myself. In a way, this is true to a fault. This fact did make it easy for me to travel by myself to meet a group of strangers in a foreign country. At the time of leaving SFO I remember being more nervous that my flight would have a lot of turbulence. I was worried I would land completely motion sick. But don’t worry, I got lucky with the smoothest flight of my entire life!  My logic was if for some reason the others on this trip and I did not get along (even though we were all there to explore a beautiful place we all had interest in), that I could still enjoy myself because I wanted to go there.

Luckily this was not the case at all! My group was 28 people. From my understanding is the average small group size for EFUB, and we all got along quickly and organically! And this continues to be my experience with the EFUB crowd. EFUB in general seems to attract a very kind, open, traveler. This makes it even easier to connect with people when traveling. When we were exploring the different islands my group even ran into another Greek EFUB tour. Everyone I got to meet in our crossing was just as friendly. There is an instant connection with others who are traveling to the same place as you. To put it simply, they just get it. 

There is also a sort of safety that happens when you travel solo but in a group, like I did. Everyone in this group was aware of each other, looked out for one another, and seemed to genuinely care about how each person was feeling. Even for simple things, like if one person forgot to pick up a water for the day, it was not unlikely that someone else would grab them one or already have an extra ready for whoever forgot.

We also got lucky with a fantastic tour guide who was very aware of everyone in the group and were able to help us find anything we needed or communicate with anyone where there was a language barrier. EFUB having a local tour director with every group is one of their biggest perks in my opinion. It adds a security net that you don’t get without a tour company. (Although you can find day tours in almost every city in the world, having someone there 24/7 is a totally different experience). 

CONCLUSION

Overall traveling with EF Ultimate Break was a breeze and I am so excited to travel with them again! The convenience of having things like transportation and accommodations handled, and to be of quality, is a perk I will continue to look for as I travel. Not only is it saving time, but it gives me comfort knowing I am not just winging it when booking things. EFUB providing a local tour director for every tour they offer is not only helpful, but a great way to work with the communities you are visiting. For a solo traveler EFUB offers a unique experience that I cannot recommend enough. And who knows. You may end up like me and meet amazing people on your solo trip and now your travels are not-so-solo because you’re meeting all over the world now!

If you would like to join me on an EFUB trip I am coordinating a trip for May of 2024 to Turkey! You can join my travel Facebook group here.