Over 50 and going on your own
Private trips in Greece for gay travellers who have stopped waiting for everyone else's calendar. Planned in Athens by a gay couple who have been doing this for thirty years.
Licensed
EOT 0206Ε60000378300, a Greek travel agency licence you can check.
In Athens
not a booking site in another country with a Greek-sounding name.
Thirty years
of Thanasis working with the same suppliers, most of whom we know by first name.
Gay-owned
Theo and Thanasis, a couple, running the company ourselves.
You will recognise at least one of these
You stopped waiting
The trip kept not happening because somebody else could not get the dates off, or was saving for a kitchen, or went quiet when you sent the third message about it. At some point you worked out that the trip does not actually require them. That is usually the week people write to us.
You want it done properly, not cheaply
You have reached the age where a four hour connection and a hotel that photographs better than it sleeps are no longer an adventure. You would rather pay somebody who knows which ferry actually runs in October and put the afternoon into lunch.
You do not want to be put in a group
Not a coach, not a rainbow flag on a lanyard, not fourteen strangers and a schedule you did not agree to. Everything on this page is private and moves at whatever pace you set on the day. Choosing a group is a different thing, and there is one below if that is what you are after.
What we actually do
You tell us roughly what you want and how long you have. We build the route, book the hotels, the ferries, the flights between islands and every transfer, and we put a guide with you on the days a guide is worth having and leave you alone on the days it is not.
Then we are on the end of a phone for the whole trip. Not a call centre. Us.
If you would rather read about the islands first, that is what our gay Greece guide is for. This page is about who is doing the booking.
What a fortnight on your own actually looks like
Two or three places rather than five. Enough nights in each that you unpack, find a cafe you go back to, and stop navigating. The people who enjoy this most are the ones who resisted the urge to see everything, and they are almost always the ones who have travelled enough to know that already.
Mornings are yours. We put the guided things where they earn their place, usually one or two days in a fortnight, and leave the rest alone. Dinner is the part solo travellers ask about most and the part that turns out to matter least, because eating alone in Greece is so ordinary that nobody registers it. We book the tables worth booking and tell you which places you can simply walk into.
The practical difference between doing this yourself and having us do it is not the itinerary. It is the morning the wind cancels the boat and someone who speaks Greek is already fixing it while you are still at breakfast.
If you do want other people around
Wanting company is not a failure of nerve and we would rather say so plainly than pretend everyone reading this wants two weeks of their own thoughts. There are two honest answers and they are different holidays.
One is our Over 50s and Fabulous tour, eight days through Athens, Santorini, Naxos and Paros, capped at ten places, on fixed dates, led by Theo. You book a seat rather than a trip, and by the third day everybody knows each other. The trade is the dates: it runs when it runs.
The other is a private trip with the sociable parts built in, which is what most people who ask this actually want. We have written the comparison out properly in escorted holidays or your own group, including how to tell which one you are.
The questions we get asked
Not what is described on this page. Everything here is private and built around one person's trip, with no fixed dates and nobody else's schedule in it.
We do run one small-group departure for over 50s each year, the Over 50s and Fabulous tour, capped at ten places and led by Theo. It is a genuinely different holiday rather than a cheaper version of this one, and it is worth reading about if being among other people is part of what you want.
Yes, and it is a fair thing to want rather than something to apologise for. Two answers, depending on how much company you mean.
- The whole trip: the Over 50s and Fabulous tour is eight days through Athens, Santorini, Naxos and Paros with a maximum of ten people, on fixed dates, led by Theo himself.
- Parts of it: on a private trip we can build in the sociable days without the rest of it. A cooking class, a shared sailing day, a guide who talks. You are on your own when you want to be and not when you do not.
Most people who ask this end up on the second one, but not all of them, and we have no reason to steer you either way.
For May, June, September and early October, which is when most people reading this actually want to travel, three to four months is comfortable and less than six weeks starts closing off the better rooms.
July and August are a different conversation and we will tell you honestly if the dates you have in mind are the wrong ones.
Of course, and a lot of people do. We will book the extra nights and then leave you alone for them, which is usually the point.
Nothing we arrange obliges you to be anywhere. It is your trip with the admin taken off it.
We do not add one ourselves. Some hotels price a room the same whether one or two people sleep in it and some do not, and we tell you which is which before you book.
What we will not do is quietly build the difference into the price and call it a solo rate.
Not remotely, and it is worth saying plainly that nobody in Greece will find it notable. Solo travellers are ordinary here, at every age.
Dinner alone at a taverna is a completely normal thing to be doing, and you will not be seated by the kitchen for it.
No. Every supplier we put you with is one we have used ourselves, and we do not send anybody to a property we would not be comfortable in.
That is the practical value of a gay-owned agency doing the booking rather than a filter on a website.
You message the concierge thread. It is a WhatsApp group with Theo and Thanasis in it, open from the day you land to the day you leave, and it is the two people who planned the trip rather than whoever happens to be on shift.
- A sailing gets cancelled: we rebook it and move the transfer waiting at the other end, usually before you have finished breakfast.
- You want a table tonight: we ask in Greek, which is a different conversation from the one a booking form has.
- The room is wrong: we take it up with the manager rather than the front desk, and it tends to get solved.
Being in the same country is most of why this works. We are on Greek time and usually a few hours from wherever you are, so a problem at eight in the morning is dealt with by nine rather than logged for somebody in another time zone to read.
Tell us when you are free
A rough month and a rough number of days is enough to start. You do not need a plan, that is the part we do.
Start your tripOr message us on WhatsApp. We answer these ourselves.