Greek Islands

lavet22

My husband and I are traveling to Athens in March.  We are going to be there for 5 nights.  I have read from travel sights that 2 full days is the max you really need to spend there.  We are wanting to go to an island for a day trip, but not sure which to chose.  Of the biggies, Santorini is what we have narrowed it down to.  I love wine and there are some great vineyards there and the history with the caldera and the excavated city are right up DH and I's alley.  But its so far, we would have to take a plane.  Which isn't a big deal, we can get round trip tickets for around $300, but if we could go to an island nearby, we would probably prefer it.  Some islands near Athens get rave reviews, but when I look into them, there doesn't seem to be much to do there.  I was hoping someone might have first hand insight on what would be a good island, close to Athens, that we could visit and have a good time, or if we should just bite the bullet and book a day trip to Santorini???  Thanks!!!

hopanka

Great choice with Santorini! I also loved Crete...it has the pink sand beach: Elafonissi. My mom has been to Naxos and said it is absolute paradise on Earth. Rhodes is for youngsters (teenagers). My 20-year old nephew loves going there every summer....and so do all the 20-year olds. Lots of clubs and young fun...so if that's not you, you should probably skip that one.

GilliC

If you only plan to spend 2-3 days in Athens, why not plan to overnight on Santorini instead of squeezing it into a long day trip?

amyelise25

I was very disappointed with Athens.  It was dirty and not very pretty.  Two or three days would have been enough to see a bunch of the big sights and museums (I was there for work and built in time to see the major sights).  I did a day trip out to three islands with a tour from Viator.  It went to Egina, Poros and Hydra.  Hydra was the prettiest.  I only spent limited time in the main port walking around and going into shops.  Egina is the closest to Pireas port (outside Athens) and has the ruin of a greek temple that were very interesting.  We also stopped at a beautiful Greek Cathedral.  There are tons of olive groves (maybe olive oil tours/tastings).  I think there were vineyards. 

I haven't been to Santorini.  I regret now making time to get out there.  I think it would be a lot to do in just a day.  I would recommend cutting a couple of days off your time in Athens and spending more time in Santorini. 

xmobergx

amyelise25 said:

I was very disappointed with Athens.  It was dirty and not very pretty.  Two or three days would have been enough to see a bunch of the big sights and museums (I was there for work and built in time to see the major sights).  I did a day trip out to three islands with a tour from Viator.  It went to Egina, Poros and Hydra.  Hydra was the prettiest.  I only spent limited time in the main port walking around and going into shops.  Egina is the closest to Pireas port (outside Athens) and has the ruin of a greek temple that were very interesting.  We also stopped at a beautiful Greek Cathedral.  There are tons of olive groves (maybe olive oil tours/tastings).  I think there were vineyards. 

I haven't been to Santorini.  I regret now making time to get out there.  I think it would be a lot to do in just a day.  I would recommend cutting a couple of days off your time in Athens and spending more time in Santorini. 

I agree. Some cities like Paris you can say are visually appealing, beautiful, gorgeous. This can't be said for Athens- it's a bunch of concrete with no beauty. However, I did love it for the history, climbing to the top of the Parthenon was absolutely amazing and seeing some of the other ruins.

We took a 5 hour ferry ride to Santorini instead of the flight. Stayed there 2 days and it was absolutely my favorite part of the trip. Stunning. Then we took a ferry from there to Mykonos which was like a 2 hour ride I believe. Stayed there for 2 days, super nice but more of a party island. Took the ferry back to Athens, again think it was 2-3 hours. I was there for a while so we also took a day trip from Athens by ferry to Aegina it was only about 45 minutes and that was a nice island but not much to do besides swim at the beach.

If you can afford the flight do it- we still laugh about the ferry ride from HELL- the waters were so choppy that all 100 people on board were throwing up in our barf bags!

lavet22

Thanks for the advice!!  We were considering going to Hydra for a day trip, but after all the comments and what we have heard (and what we REALLY want to do) I think we may just do an overnight in Santorini.  It doesn't sound like we will miss much in Athens and I think I would regret going all the way to Greece without going to one of it's most picturesque islands.