We set our foot in Greece mid day on Friday the 30th of August at the port of Patra. Our first mission was to find, the very appraised in travel guides, tourist Information center where we could get a decent road map of Greece. After unsuccessfully wondering around for a while, Holly popped into to a travel agent to get some directions. A few minutes later she emerged with a friendly Greek-American lady who explained that during the economic crisis a lot of civil servant jobs were cut and the information center we were seeking for is now closed. She very kindly took us to a good book store with lots of maps and gave us some initial schooling about Greece in a lovely New York accent.
We bought a "Road Editions” map of Greece which is composed with the help of the Greek military and apparently the most accurate. So far we found it to be very good and combined with the sat nav makes it hard to get lost. Sat nav, although great in some ways, cam be a bit naughty at times and it’s not good for route planing unless you need to get from A to B in the shortest time possible (we often do just the opposite). The map has marked scenic routes and some campsites as an added bonus. We also have the Michelin road atlas of Europe, which is great for getting the bigger picture but the scale isn’t large enough for detailed exploration.