My wife and I will be in Greece January 9 - 31, 2009.

Any suggestions on what to see?

We were thinking of maybe two possibly three other places besides Athens.

Any suggestions on a decent say 3* hotel in Athens? We love to walk!

www.greektravel.com will give you a good start and he'll answer emails.

Greece in winter offers special challenges and special opportunities.

The museums and archeological sites will be mostly open and mostly empty. The weather if you are lucky will be chilly but clear so you can walk around the sites and have them mostly to yourself.

I'd avoid most of the smaller islands, which are likely to be hard to get to in winter and may not have many hotels or other places open. Rhodes and Crete have a more or less year round season, though it will be too cold even there to go to the beach. Personally if I found myself in Greece at that season, those would be the places I'd concentrate on.

I agree with the suggestion to not go to the small islands. Actually, it's maybe best not to go to any islands at all, since Crete and Rhodes and Corfu do have large local populations, but they (at least Rhodes and Corfu; maybe Southern Crete is better) are incredibly wet and rainy during winter.

I suggest you look into the following places:

Thessaloniki- SKG(the country's only major city apart from ATH): interesting churches, fabulous food, Macedonian remnants in the vicinity (you need to rent a car for these), decent scenery by the sea (don't expect to swim).

Ioannina - IOA- and Metsovo: it's going to be freezing there, but they're a bit of a timewarp...traditional architecture, hiking paths, a lake in the middle of the city, a seriously slow pace of life, and again some food to die for.

"Alternative" destinations:

Kavala - KVA: mid-sized city with good scenery, and near a major ski centre

Nafplio (not far from ATH): similar to KVA, plus it's got an ancient theatre nearby, as well as some more archaeological stuff in nearby Korinthos (Corinth).

If you must go to an island, CFU is the most beautiful. But it WILL be rainy.

Aegean (A3) have plenty of flights to all of the above places. Good train service to SKG, mediocre to KVA.

Hotel in Athens: that's a tough one. Classical hotels are running some pretty neat prepaid offers at the moment. EUR89 per night for a superior room in the 5-star Acropol! ^

We were in Greece for 10 days last January. We were a party of nine people including 5 children ages 9 - 16, so we tried to keep it simple. We flew into Athens and got right on Aegean to Santorini. It is obviously off season there, and we got great accommodations for not much money, but there was only one restaurant open in the town where we stayed. Luckily it was great, but the fact that there were no choices was a bit disappointing. We expected things to be slow though, so we weren't surprised, just hoping for a little variety.

That being said, Santorini is beautiful and the weather was cooperative - in the mid-high 60s which was fine for us. Athens was colder, windier and wetter, but of course there's no way to predict that. We had the museums to ourselves and the vendors in the Plaka were anxious to haggle to make a sale. If the weather had been just a bit more cooperative in Athens, it would have been a perfect time to be there.

We did several side trips which I certainly recommend and which are nice at that time of year because the tourists won't be jamming the place. We did Delphi which was fabulous - thoroughly recommend it. Again, perfect weather and no crowds. Friends were there this summer and said it was shoulder to shoulder people and no fun at all. We tend to do our big trips in winter for this very reason.

We booked all of our transportation through George the world famous Athens taxi driver, whom you will meet if you go to greektravel.com. as a previous poster suggested. Although George himself was on holiday while we were there, we arranged for airport transport and our excursions through him and saved a bundle - and all on OUR schedule, not someone else's. When we wanted an itinerary that varied slightly from the published schedule, we got it with no hassle. I do think the tourism folks are anxious for business at that time of year. Anyway, PM me if you want the contact info. Hiring George really greased things on our Athens portion and we had a beautiful new Mercedes mini-bus to and from the airport that was cheaper and ten times nicer than a cab (for nine of us though - for two, you'lll still get a Mercedes but don't know the cost).

Anyway, if I can be of any help, having just done this trip, feel free to PM me. We had a great time.

Hotel Attalos is a very good 3 star hotel. the rooms are nothing special but the rooftop bar is great and the location is A1!

As for George he picked me up in his Merc and its worth the little extra cash for sure.

I loved Rhodes in season and while the weather wouldn't be as good as Spring/Summer I'm sure there are enough sights to explore, such as Lindos, in the off season. Crete also an option and I'll toss out Hydra given its proximity to Athens and relative ease being combined with a wander through the Peloponnese.