It's good advice to go directly to Santorini and save Athens for the end so there's no last-minute stress to make your flight home.

Another reason to go straight to Santorini is so you don't split your time in Athens, forcing you to do two hotel check-ins/check-outs, and two round trips between airport and city, gaining you some sightseeing time. I would also recommend you cut some time from Santorini and spend a night or two in picturesque Nafplio, a coastal town in the Peloponnese, about 2-3 hours by road from Athens. Nearby are some of the most important archaeological sites in Greece.

as you are flying in Athens from Paris and not from NYC
it is a better idea to go directly to Santorini as you will not be tired from the flight and let Athens at the end of your trip with 2-3 days (2 nights) before you fly to NYC.
the day trip from Santorini to Myconos it is not a very good idea as the journey by normal ferries takes 3 hours so you will need 6 hours only for the trip, so it is better to have minimum 1 night in Myconos or to avoid the trip.

"We want to immerse ourselves in the greek culture and learn about it."

It is a little to difficult to do that in the 2 most tourist islands of Greece during the high season.
A good suggestion is Nafplio as Heindall propose to you

Great idea to fly directly to Santorini. I'll check prices. I guess it would be a lot of travel time to visit Mykonos. Is it a must see? Are there any closer islands that have quaint little towns worth making a day trip to? I love the idea of taking a day or two for Nafplio. Would it be crazy to try to sightsee in Athens while based in Nafplio? Trying to cut down on the check-ins, check-outs and packing while on the mainland.

am planning my honeymoon to greece in may. have been told that santorini mykonos crete and athens are a must. mykonos well is mainly for the beach partis, clubs and nightlife. athens, santorini & crete are said to be great for the culture. this is what i have been told on many other forums. hope it helps. cheers!!!

Thanks gopalgc. As for Mykonos, I was interested in in getting lost in the narrow windy streets that I heard about in someone else's post. Sounded like Venice to me. I don't care about the beaches, parties, and night life so much. I'm very much into photography so I'm drawn to picturesque. BTW, the christine1212 post above was me. I didn't even know I had another login name, ha.

Christine, ferry timings makes it impractical (if not impossible) to do a day trip from Santorini to Mykonos. You could visit Therasia, the little island opposite Oia in the Santorini caldera, or maybe get a few hours on Ios, the island noted mainly for beaches and backpacker bars.

You wrote: "We want to immerse ourselves in the greek culture and learn about it." Honestly, you are not going to see much of Greek culture on any of the nearby islands. In the summer the islands are devoted almost completely to tourism, with visitors far outnumbering inhabitants.

If you limit your time on Santorini you could rent a car at the airport when you fly back to Athens, then drive straight to Nafplio in less than three hours. If you don't want to drive, there are companies based in Athens offering organized tours anything from one day to two or three days and more. Here is an example of one offered by Chat: http://www.chatours.gr/tours.php?exc=8&exccat=1. If you have only one day, you could do a tour like this: http://tours.keytours.gr/Athens/epidaurus_mycenae_one_day_tour_from_athens-26.html.

For another island, you could do a daytrip from Athens/Piraeus to the island of Hydra. Hydra has no cars or scooters; transport is on foot or by donkey. We found it very picturesque, a great place to visit and just walk around.

Also from Athens there are standard, 3-island daytrip tours which visit Hydra, Aegina, and Poros.

You might want to involve the teenager in the planning. Give him or her some guidebooks to read up on your destinations. Or the family can watch travel DVDs. Maybe let the teen pick some sights to see, in Paris and Greece. An actively involved teenager makes a much more pleasant travel companion.

"We want to immerse ourselves in the greek culture and learn about it."

Santorini is about as "Greek" as Maui. It is really beautiful, but I can't imagine being there for so many days with a teen.

Nafplion is lovely and a good base to explore the Argoloid peninsula. But Athens is really Greek and there is much culture to absorb there. I would not ignore the Cycladic island entirely, but if you want to find real Greece, consider Tinos - which would allow you to daytrip to Mykonos and Delos, while offering a chance to see a year round Greek island, charming authentic villages (yes, there is some tourism on Tinos, but it is mostly GREEKS who holiday there because it has a very special church). It also has some of the finest collections of art galleries, as the island is known for producing some of the greatest Greek artists...

You could daytrip to Mykonos and Delos from Tinos - so you'd have a chance to see three islands as part of this portion of your trip.

I'd revise the plans to look something like this:

Arrive in Athens and fly to Mykonos and ferry to Tinos or just leave the Athens airport and go to Rafina where you can ferry to Tinos (from Mykonos it's 15-20 minutes by ferry between the two islands)
Spend 4 days between Tinos/Mykonos

Sun - arrive Greece - go to MYK or TINOS
Monday - MYK to DELOS then to TINOS
Tuesday - TINOS
Wed - TINOS
Thurs - TINOS back to Athens
Fri - Athens
Sat - Athens (You could do a daytrip to Nafplion/Argoloida)
Sun - Athens / NYC

In six weeks in Greece, the only time we surrounded by other Americans was in Santorini. It looked Greek, but didn't feel like it. We preferred Paros, Crete and Napflion to Santorini. Shorten your stay in Santorini if you still plan to go there.

Thanks everyone, very interesting ideas. I was wondering if too much time was dedicated to Santorini. As much as that greek culture sentence means my artist eye is extremely drawn to picturesque. I'm not sure I could visit Greece without going to see all those little white cliffside houses in person.
GVRgirl - thanks for the revised itinerary. This is definitely the kind of input I am looking for. I need to research these new locations. As stated, I am very much a newbie to Greece. I really am not sure what we want to see yet.
Mimar - I like the idea of Hydra. It sounds quaint.

Btw, forgot to ask... If we do spend some time in Santorini, which town is best, Thira?

Fly straight to Santorini on Sunday - stay one night (where you stay depends on your budget) so you can see it, then take a Flying Cat (2.5 hours) to Mykonos - and then continue with the rest of your trip.

On Santorini stay in Oia. It's smaller than Thira/Fira but more picturesque. Here are some of my photos from May of last year: https://picasaweb.google.com/111670751666301106584/Santorini2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCOykn-GGzYPAUw#

(I'd use a tiny URL but they seem to expire. One of my links in another thread doesn't work any more. Or maybe Picasa moved things.)

Mimar, pictures like yours are exactly what's making me long to see Santorini. Good idea CVRGirl. What about staying on Naxos/ Would that make it possible to go to both Santorini and Mykonos as a day trip?

Santorini is not near the other Cycladic Islands, so no day trip.

Happy Tvvlr
Ios , Sikinos and Anafi are not far from Santorini, it is the the ferry connections that make a day trip impossible, with the exception of Ios perhaps. ( when i was living on the island, one could go to Ios in the morning and come back on tje same day, not sure this is doable now)

Long2travel, Naxos has day trips to both Santorini and Delos/Mykonos. The Santorini day trips go once per week, although I believe the two companies operating them go on different days. You would get 6 hours on the island, enough for some good photos. Delos/Mykonos trips run three days per week, spending about 3 hours on Delos and 3 hours on Mykonos.

Frankly Naxos is much more teen-friendly than Santorini. Like GVRGirl I was wondering how you could spend four days on Santorini without your teen getting bored. That said, Naxos is mainly about beaches, although there are some traditional inland villages tucked away in the mountains. One of the villages, Apiranthos, is paved in Naxian marble!

Well Heimdall, I guess that should have been my first question. I'm not sure what there is to do on any of the islands, except for the beaches that is. We may want to sit on a beach one day but that isn't the focus of the trip. I can get to some nice beaches without such pricey airfare.

On Santorini you can visit the archaeological site of Akrotiri,
you can go to Ancient Thira, visit the old village of Pyrgos for the amazing view, take the boat for the volcano tour and go to the island of Thirassia, which is just opposite of Santorini, behind the volcano, but no one ever visits it.....

You can also visit some of the wineries of Santorini, the teen could try a tiny bit of Vinsanto wine, which is a local high quality sweet wine, made of sun dried grapes.

You can go on a photo tour in Oia, the teen can take some pictures as well, trying to spot the best places....

Santorini is not that boring as some others believe, it's what you do out of it.

long2travel, you say you cannot go to greece without going to see those "white cliffside houses", as if they exist only in Santorini. ALL the Cycladic islands have the "white Houses" with blue shutters, etc and many many house are on cliffs and mountainsides descending to the sea. Among the islands where u can see the same dwellings are Ios, Paros, Naxos, Mykonos, Antiparos, Tinos, Sifnos, Serifos, Milos, Kythnos, Folegandros, Amorgos, Andros, SIkinos, Syros and Tzia. Of course Santorini is truly beautiful but its housing style is not unique. Here's a website with dramatic photo highlights of all the above. http://www.greek-islands.us/

The Santorini houses follow a different architecture than the rest of the Cyclades.

In villages on the cliff you will see the traditional cave houses, that make Santorini so unique, and houses poor people in the past. ( now Oia is amongst the 3 most expensive places of Greece regarding realestate)

There are the rich peoples houses, that were located on the highest spots of the villages, the 1800 restaurant in Oia is a good example of such a house.

Locals are building their houses not in the traditional shape of all the other Cyclades, but they use a rectangular shape with vaulted roofs, that make Santorini unique.

Have a look at http://users.ntua.gr/kamy/reconstruction.pdf

I see travelerjan is back, giving incorrect information as usual.

I also forgot to add that also Andros and Kea ( Tzia) have a different architecture from the rest of Cyclades.

On both islands the common type of houses has ceramic tiles ( which the other islands didn't have because of poverty - on Mykonos i can only recall 1-2 buildings with a tiled roof).

These islands had a rich naval tradition, the neoclassicl houses of Andros are still reminding it.

The capital of Syros - Ermoupolis ,is a typical example of this kind of architecture, based on the prosperity of the past

And the churches of Mykonos have red domes rather than blue. Lots of little differences from island to island.

On my experience all of Cyclades have a generic similar architectural sytle. Key word here is *generic*. Of course there are differences among each island and even location, but I do not think this makes so much difference to a first time visitor unless he has a specific interest/knowledge on all things architecture. And of course cavehouses in Santorini were unique, but nowadays they are mostly a hotel attraction than an every day thing (or I might be worng, I do not know.)
That said, it is true that due to volcanic nature of Santorini, landscape of the cladera is quite different than any cliff or hill side on other islands. On my opinion there are no must-sees or must-dos on a trip though. I suggest to the OP to make some research on other islands before deciding automatically on Santorini. Key word here is *automatically* lol

BTW interesting read clausar, thank you. I had a quick look and will read in depth later. It seems like someone's intergrated project or something? Who wrote it?