valdous

Hi there,

After reading tons of past posts, I wanted to post my first one:

My husband's parents live in Kalymnos (they moved there from Canada a couple of years ago). We visited them last year. Our 2-week stay was 7 days in Kalymnos (with a day trip to Patmos), 4 days in Rhodes and 2 in Athens.

This year (September again), we're spending another 2 weeks there and we'll likely spend 6-7 days in Kalymnos, 3-4 in Santorini but we're not sure which island to do in between...

Any advice is much appreciated. We're not party types, we enjoy visiting the ancient sites, we're foodies and wine-ies (is that a word? haha), and our main goal is to de-stress. Our last visit to Kalymnos was a week of relaxation lazing by the pool and we'll likely do the same this year. We'll be ending our trip in Santorini, and from the pictures we see, it's so beautiful... We wouldn't mind the in-between leg of our trip to have some historic or cultural elements. We're open to anything memorable!

Thanks in advance and sorry for my long-winded first post.

brotherleelove2004

Since you'll be so close to Turkey, why not go to Bodrum? There's an amazing 15th Century Crusader's castle there as well, as the site of the Halicarnassus Mausoleum, one of the original "7 Wonders of the World." You can get there by ferry from Kos, which is very close to Kalymnos.

http://tinyurl.com/3xa9su

valdous

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll admit, we hadn't even considered Turkey ... one of our goals is to slowly make our way through all the islands over the coming years. Espceially now that my in-laws live there, we have reason to visit more often.

I've seen quite a few of your posts on the site so thanks for reading mine!

I was worried about how to make our way from Kalymnos and Santorini - the traveling, ferry vs. air and where to stop that would be convenient and appealing. We're completely undecided but we'd prefer to stay somewhere in Greece, in the Cyclades, but where...that is the puzzle...

brotherleelove2004

I just had a look at last September's schedules for departures from Kalymnos and discovered that there were several ferries to Naxos during September. Some had late-night departures, some early-morning. The shortest duration at sea was 4 hours (which seems incredibly fast considering the distance) and 12 hours, depending on the day and the company. There's no way to know what next September's schedule will be, but at least you can be sure that there is a very good chance that you will be able to get to Santorini from Kalymnos fairly easily by first going to Naxos, which is very close to Santorini, as close as 2 hours (again, depending on the day and company).

Use the website below to check on September's schedules between these two islands. They're not there now, but will be later on in the year, possibly as early as May or June.

http://www.openseas.gr/OPENSEAS/serv...amp;show=index

Heimdall

Further to brotherleelove's post: the four hour ferry he referred to is either Blue Star Paros or Blue Star Naxos. It sailed from Kalymnos at 0530 on Mon & Sat, arriving Naxos at 0930. It also stopped at Paros an hour later before going on to Piraeus.

If you can arrange your itinerary to use this twice per week service, do so. The Blue Stars are fast, modern conventional ferries. I have sailed on both, and highly recommend them.

Retsina

Why not try something less boring and predictable than hacking your way to Santorini....
Try one of these two much more interesting routes, garanteed less stressfull:
1) Kalymnos - Astypalea - Amorgos - Naxos.
2) Kalymnos - Patmos - Samos - Ikaria - Naxos/Paros/Mykonos.

valdous

We have our hearts set on Santorini and want to limit the amount of hopping to 3 destinations...

We're actually talking about extending our stay to 15 days now as well...

Does Kalymnos - Santorini - Crete make sense?

The 4-hour ferry sounds wonderful - I thought it would take much longer than that! That's great information.

Heimdall

Valdous, with extra days to play with, that gives you more scope, but I feel you are wise to limit the number of destinations. Should you choose the four hour ferry to Naxos, it would make sense to stop off there for a few days rather than just changing ferries for Santorini. If you do want to go straight on to Santorini, however, there should be another Blue Star arriving in Naxos about 1240 to take you there: http://tinyurl.com/y4gsfk. After your stay on Santorini you could go on to Crete on Flying Cat 4: http://www.ferries.gr/hfd/.

Another alternative would be a ferry to Rhodes, then Rhodes to Crete, and Crete to Santorini. Bear in mind that the ferry timetables are subject to change so you will have to wait until summer to know whether either of these routes would be practical.