Fellow Fodorites-
My husband and I have our 30th anniversary next year and would love to do a cruise in the Mediterranean- particularly Athens and Greek Islands. However, we don't like crowds or being part of a herd for island excursions. We want to do a lot of exploring during the day-time, crash with a good book at night. We've looked at Oceania, Windstar, and some of the others but can't decide which line is right for us. We would welcome any suggestions!

definitely Windstar line--esp the Windsurf...I answered your other post about comparing the 2 lines--Oceania vs Windstar earlier..

I particularly LOVE the sails up and going into small extremely interesting ports...

Sail on the Royal Clipper......it is fantastic. Check out their website. It is in the Med until October.

http://www.starclippers.com

You might also want to take a look at Radisson. We just did an Istanbul - Athens cruise on the Radisson Diamond that we really enjoyed. The Diamond has maximum passenger capacity of around 350 people and never felt crowded. Entertainment is low-key at night, food was very good. Couple of nice touches that we enjoyed: the open bridge policy (and a friendly, approachable Captain who made you feel welcome when you wandered in) and the water sports platform that the Diamond puts out when the ship is at anchor and weather conditions allow. The ship has snorkle equipment and kayaks available for passengers to use. It was great to take a dip in the Aegean right off the ship.

Next year the Diamond will be again be doing Greek Island itineraries. Ours included Santorini, Myknonos, Rhodes, Nafplio, Kusadasi, and Dikili (small Turkish fishing village) but Radisson varies the ports on most sailings.

I agree with Maddy, would cruise with Radisson, we just finished the Diamond from Venice to Rome, via Dubrovnik, Naxos and Sorrento. Very good food, wine is free with dinner, plenty of room albeit we had 315 on the ship. Check out cruisecritic.com for cruise info, more traffic than Fodors for this type of forum.

Another one to look at is Crystal Symphony - We did Rome to Athens (hit Turkey, Greek Islands, Venice and a few other places) - and it was wonderful. You never felt there were any herds.....