Travel to Greece & Italy – DIY

Europe is always in the travel bucket list for most of us in India. Afterall, Europe has captivated people since long time thanks to the local movie industry and through the history & geography lessons imparted at school. Although well worth the visit, it’s definitely quite heavy on the purse. As Indians, we always are on a never-ending quest of value-for-money deals and experiences. OfCourse, there is this back-pack travel option that turns out to be the most cost-effective when travelling to Europe. But then, some of us want to enjoy this European experience along with our kid(s). After a lot of planning, topped with confidence from colleagues who travelled recently to Greece, we finally went for a summer vacation to Greece and Italy this summer of 2024. Through this blog, I would like to list out most of the stuff that worked me in the whole process: the visa, flights, hotels, local transport, etc. Do check it out and plan one of the best trips of your lives!

Applying Greece Visa from India

First things first: The Schengen visa. My recommendation is to apply for the Schengen visa well in advance (at least 2-3 months). Greek visa can be applied via Global Visa Center (GVC) at their website https://in-gr.gvcworld.eu/en. Register for account in their website and start the application process. Normally they open up the appointment dates only for next few days, so keep checking for convenient date/time for the visa application. After successful application, they normally take around 15 working days to issue the visa, but it does vary from case to case. For one of my colleagues, their passports came within 5 working days, we got our passports with visa stamped after 19 working days (3 weeks). So, select an appropriate date. At the time of registration only the passport details are required. You have time to prepare the supporting documents, which needs to be ready on the date of submission at GVC office.

Document Checklist: If you have ever applied for Schengen visa, you know that there is a need for lots of supporting documents. Below is the checklist that was requested by the Greece Embassy:

• Original Passport (s): Current passport + one previous one.
• Cover Letter: As per my colleague, this is the most important document. This is where we give our personal details, rough itinerary, declare our “best” intentions for the trip. You can use the below format for the same (remember that separate cover letter is required for all applications – One for you, one for your spouse, one for your kid(s)):

• Detailed Itinerary: Complete itinerary highlighting the day-to-day activities planned has to be provided. We provided something like below:

• Proof of Sponsorship: Bank statements (original attested by bank), past 2 years ITR (attested by CA), pay slips from company.
• Travel Insurance: These days there are lot of options, we went with Reliance Insurnace based on inputs from my colleagues. You pick whatever works best for you!
• Company Letter: For working folks, this is a must-have document, where the company provides details of the employee’s designation, working since, leaves taken, reporting back to work, etc. printed on the company letterhead. This acts as a proof that the applicant has a job to return back to, a strong reason to return to India.
• Accommodations: I booked accommodation for all places (via booking and Agoda) which had cancellation option until 3-4 weeks after I submitted our visa application. This way, if something went wrong with the visa, I could cancel and not lose anything. Another suggestion I got was to book star hotels that have cancellation possibility until previous day. One caveat here is that if you are travelling in high season (June-August), you might have availability issues when trying to book closer to the travel date.
• Transportation: The dots have to be connected! Flight from home city, entering &exiting Europe, Ferry/Trains and any flight(s) inside Europe everything need to be provided. For flight, I recommend you do a dummy ticket booking, from this legitimate site https://www.dummyticket.com/. This site provides a cancellable ticket with a valid PNR, verifiable by immigration authority. The only downside is the Rs.1,200 that is charged per ticket is gone, you cannot convert this to a confirmed ticket later on. The ticket is only valid for a while (probably ~15 days), and we need to book the appropriate flights once the visa gets issued. With respect to Greek island hopping, Blue Star Ferries are the most economical and reliable companies to go with. You can search and do the booking via credit card at their website: https://www.bluestarferries.com/en-gb. They mention that these tickets are cancellable until 7 days prior to departure, but I have heard conflicting information from others, so I won’t vouch for this refund. I bought the train tickets within Italy (Naples to Rome) from https://www.omio.com/, we can also buy from the Trenitalia website too. We can change the date for free, cancellation probably takes 20% though. Date change is easy (I did it once), we need to use the Trenitalia website directly to do it, as it wasn’t working via Omio for some reasons. The prices are quite low, so booking is less risky, they also have great family offers (with 2 adults, one kid travels for free!).

Visa submission day: Reached GVC office by 9am, even though appointment was 9:30am, the security guard let us in. By 9:15am, the lady at the counter called us, and started processing my application firstly. Thanks to my colleagues, our documents were in order, except that they requested my financial statements to be photocopied and attached along with my spouse and daughter applications as well (Lot of printouts – 20-30 pages of bank statement multiplied by number of applications doesn’t sound very green, does it?). Here we also found out that minors below 12 years of age don’t need biometrics registration and signature on forms to be done by both parents. Basically, they don’t need to accompany you for this visa submission. And the best part is there are no visa fees until 12 years, only the GVC charges of Rs.3,300. Otherwise, the visa charges are 80 euros (comes to Rs.7,200) plus 3300 for GVC processing, around 10K per applicant. GVC felt more comfortable environment compared to VFS, people seemed more friendly and helpful. We got our passports after 3 weeks of application submission. Travel to Greece & Italy was now turning out to be a reality.

Planning the trip

Places to visit: First, you need to identify the places you want to visit. If applying for Greece, you probably are interested to explore Athens first. Do a 2- or 3-night stay in this Greek capital before heading out to the islands. For the Islands, you have multiple choices: Paros, Naxos, Mykonos, Santorini, and many others. Do self-study based on your interests and pick your islands, all are easily accessible via ferries. For Italy, Rome is a must, being the most important city in the ancient world. You can next include either Southern Italy (like Naples/Pompeii/Amalfi as we did) or Northern Italy (Venice/Florence/Pisa like my colleague did). Whichever direction you go Trenitalia has fantastic connectivity and convenience.

Places to Stay: I booked most of our stays via booking.com. For Athens, there are lots of BnB apartments, with great value for money, in the range of 4-6K INR per night. We picked a place on the Dimitrakopoulou street near Syngrou-Fix metro station after studying lots of reviews, it was easy to reach from Athens Airport. For the islands, again do your study, I prefer places closer to public transport. In case of islands, pick one near to the local bus terminal. For Paros, we picked a nice place that was walkable from Port of Parikia, and close to the Parikia Bus station, this way we could easily reach different parts of the islands using the convenient bus transport. Santorini, well, its overhyped and overpriced, you will need to shell out anywhere between 15-25k INR per night for a good room if travelling in high season. My colleagues went in off-season, one in October, other in May, and got good deals in the range of 12-13K INR per night for great sunset view rooms, with breakfast. For Italy, I must say I was particularly daunted with the task of booking room at Naples – a badly reputed city in the Southern Italy, known for pickpockets and shady areas. Although I found a nice accommodation in Naples, after lot of negative opinion with friends & family, we decided to stay in Pompeii, relatively safer option, apparently. It was another BnB in the main street, and there are convenient trains between Naples & Pompeii – Pick accommodation near the Pompeii Trenitalia station and you are sorted out. We found that staying at Salerno is also a viable option, to do Amalfi and Pompeii day trips, and there is fantastic train connectivity to Naples, and onwards to Rome. Coming to Rome, wow, this is super expensive, even BnB apartments are in the range of 8-10k INR per night. We found one very nice Hotel near to Cornelia Metro station, and thought it was very good. Just 5 mins walk from the Cornelia train station, easy access to Vatican and Roma Termini, and a stop nearby for the shuttle bus to Fiumicino Airport made it very convenient stay for us.

Places to Eat: Insta is full of places to eat and drink, so I believe people know this better. Enjoying the local food & wine is a mandatory requirement for our family travels, and we look for places where we can gorge on some local delicacies – Greek Salad/Gyros, etc in Greece, and Salad/Pizza/Pasta in Italy. Local wine, beer, traditional liquors like Limoncello in Amalfi area are a must-try. Italy is known world over for Gelato, you can’t escape these unbelievable treats in Rome & elsewhere. So, when in Rome, do what the Romans do!

Attractions: For tickets to popular attractions, there is Getyourguide – this is a fantastic app/website which lets you book tickets online – https://www.getyourguide.com/ (OfCourse you could do it once you are at the place itself, but it gives you a kind of calm that the ticket has been booked, especially during the peak season when all roads lead to Rome!). We booked the 6-attractions package in Athens, Vatican Museums and Colosseum in Rome, Temple of Poseidon at Sounion in Athens, and everything went very smooth and easy – definitely recommend getyourguide for ticketing & tour services. For Pompeii, as I was fairly confident that tickets would be available, we bought it directly at the site, reaching before the crowds by 9am. For Mount Vesuvius entrance + transfer, you can buy it directly from local tourist agencies like AroundVesuvius in Pompeii main street (I bought it online from their website – https://www.aroundvesuvio.com/index-en.php).

Payment & cost reduction: We used mostly the credit cards for all the payments. My colleagues used the Niyo Global Card and found it very economical and convenient, no markup fees like credit card. If you have some USD/Euros this also could be good, as some places we might need cash, for smaller currencies, for souvenir shopping, buying water bottles, etc. Water is expensive in Greece, and one thing you could do to save some cost is to buy a 6 bottle (1.5litres) crate which comes out more economical. In Italy though, most places have water fountains where you can fill drinkable water for free. Dining out is definitely expensive, you could opt for street food like Gyros in Greece, and bakeries for good pizza and bread both in Italy and Greece. We did a pit stop at Abu Dhabi from Bangalore, as we found the Wizzair flight to Athens & return from Rome to Abu Dhabi was quite cheap – in the range of 5-7K INR per person without any baggage, you can add 10kg/20kg bags for acceptable cost. We also wanted to explore Abu Dhabi enroute. Bangalore-Abu Dhabi return was 35K per person though. Note that there is an extra cost of transit visa (55 AED per person for 48-hours) and hotel at Abu Dhabi. So, if you get a Bangalore-Athens/Rome return in the 45-55K range, I think it would be better to fly directly. For hotel stay, try to balance – Stay at cheaper places in Athens and another Island, and relatively expensive place in Santorini. Stay at cheaper place in Naples/Pompeii and slightly expensive in Rome, mix and match according to your budget.

Overall, it took a solid 2-3 months of planning for this fantastic trip, and I believe it was well worth it. I love planning the details, gives me an opportunity to understand the city even better. I have tried to assimilate some of these ideas in this blog, hopefully it should help people in planning (and executing) the Greece & Italy trip by themselves. I wish you all the best in your European adventures and should you have any further questions or thoughts please drop me a message here, I will be happy to help. I will be soon publishing detailed blogs on our experiences and itineraries at Athens, Greek Islands, Pompeii and Rome. If you haven’t subscribed to my newsletter yet, please do so, to get these upcoming articles sent to your email directly, thanks!