General

Holidays by Destination Europe Greece General Where to Go 

The Greek Islands are the classic destination, often twinned with a few days in Athens. Of the roughly 2,000 islands only around 200 are inhabited and about 60 of interest to visitors.

Those islands have seen the bulk of tourism, particularly the larger ones like Rhodes, Crete and Corfu. It is possible to get away from this on the smaller islands if you choose the right one, but there may be a downside such as poor or non-existent beaches. An alternative, as yet less exploited by international visitors, is resorts on the mainland.

For those who really want to get away from it all there is the mainland interior where there are the fertile but slightly more tedious lowlands or mountains. Seventy per cent of the country however includes mountains of more than 6,500 ft (2,000 metres), some of them very lovely.

The country as a whole boasts more varieties of wild flowers than in any other country in Europe as well as lizards, geckos, tortoises, a wide variety of birds and butterflies but the inland countryside is the best place for spotting most of these and definitely to see foxes, wild boar, deer and even wolves, which still live in the north.