Patricia Hajifotiou

Patricia, a native of Ohio, works in Greece doing our Athens to Olympia tour.  She also owns a tour company that does non-cycling trips for alumni groups and colleges.  This company, an offshoot of another company she sold in 2009, is called The Olive Odysseys.

Patricia has always been an athlete, competing in cross country, basketball and track in college. While living stateside 20 years ago she and her husband Manolis, started cycling in order to get in shape.  Their first bike ride took them 1 mile from their house.  They thought they weren't going to make it home that day from the effort.  But continued to forge forward for the next several days.  Soon they were doing criteriums and road races.

A few years later they sold a business and moved back to Europe. Here ExperiencePlus! entered their lives when  they discovered that someone would pay them to cycle.  Of course there was much more to being a tour leader, but it was a service oriented job that they had plenty of experience with.  Today they are some of the most experienced staff members with ExperiencePlus!.

Patricia reports that she loves the ExperiencePlus! Classical Greece: Athens to Olympia tour for many reasons, and here are just a few-

She still has to pinch herself to make sure it is real, when each tour starts with a welcome drink in our starting hotel right underneath the Acropolis.

Most ruins have such unassuming approaches in Greece.  No billboards, no fuss, but you get to gently climb up to the ruins at Mycenae where Heinrich Schielmann using the stories of Homer uncovered one of the most spectacular caches of all time.  Our tours allows you to get here early where many times you can enjoy the Tholos tombs all by yourself.

You can ride up to the ruins at Nemea (where they still hold the Nemean games) where you can see the donor list from the University of California at Berkeley whom have supported the digs here over the years.  Twice, tour participants were happily surprised to see names of people they knew.

Seeing the look of accomplishment on the faces of those who have completed the climb of Kalavrita.  The group usually reconnoiters at a chalet after a down hill section.  A congratulatory coffee and sweet is usually the order of the day and the conviviality could not be better.

Watching tour members having a dip in  the Aegean.  Sometimes for the first time in their lives.


"The tour leaders on this trip are priceless - they increased the enjoyment of the trip in so many ways; we have always enjoyed the trip leaders on your tours, but I feel that these three: Patricia, Manolis, and Yorgos are exceptional; I hope we get to tour with them again."

“Wonderful: wise, sympathetic, smart, hard working, devoted to her brood of bicyclists, positive, enthusiastic, capable and in control.”

"I loved her suggestions as to where we should eat and what we should look for on our rides and in our stops along the way."