Athens and Crete Help

Old Jul 7th, 2005, 06:16 AM
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Athens and Crete Help

Such great advice on Greece in these forums so I thought I would ask a few questions of you experts. Later this year, my husband and I will be in Greece during the middle of October. However, we have only eight total days actually on the ground in Greece and are currently booked for all eight nights at the Grand Bretayne in Athens. However, since we are coming a long way from the States, I thought we should visit one island as well. Our limitation is that we need to stay in a Starwood resort and I want to be on the water if we go to an island. So I thought we would split the trip of eight nights and stay four nights at the Blue Palace on Crete and then the last four nights in Athens. My questions: 1) Since we only have really three and a half days for Crete, is it silly to even consider that? We will fly over there to get there quickly when we first arrive in Greece. Is it smarter to just stay in Athens for the whole eight days instead? I really don't know when we will get back to Greece so I would HATE to miss an island after traveling so far. 2) If we do Crete, should we still rent a car for that short period of time or is it smarter to just find tours of the key places on Crete? Haven't read many comments in these write-ups about actual tour operators on Crete so not sure if that exists in October. 3)I have heard about a one day ferry excursion by Saronic Island Cruise from Athens to Saronic Gulf Islands of Aegina, Angistri, Poros, Hydra and Spetses. Does anyone have experience with this company? Wondered if this is a worthwhile day trip. Many thanks for any input and thanks for all the other great advice in these forums!
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Old Jul 7th, 2005, 08:46 AM
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Some people could easily fill 8 days in Athens. I for one could not. 2 days, 3 at most, satisfy my need to explore that ancient city and then I need to get away from all the noise, traffic and overcrowded tourist areas to somewhere more relaxing.

By all means go to Crete. You will not regret your decision to do so. Renting a car is also a god idea since Crete is so large.

I can't imagine what a one day cruise to 5 islands would be like. I suppose if it would satisfy you to pass by with little or no time ashore to experience life on these islands then it might be a pleasant daysail diversion, but otherwise avoid it like the plague.
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Old Jul 7th, 2005, 09:47 AM
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While I think Athens gets a bad rap and I personally could find enough to do there for 8 days (because I like museums of which there are many and would also do a couple of excursions outside of Athens proper), I would recommend that you spend half your time on Crete.

This is my personal bias but I'd rent a car on Crete rather than taking package tours. I hadn't done one of the mass bus tour things for many, many years (just a couple of 4-6 person mini van day tours in Cairo and three 15 person day tours out of Inverness), so I decided to take a 2-day Delphi/Meteora tour out of Athens in May and see how I "tolerated" it. Planned my itinerary around that and a ferry schedule from Santorini to Crete, only to have the 2-day tour cancelled (by both Athens tours companies that had a departure that day). So my husband and I decided to do a one-day Delphi and a one-day Argolis tour instead. I won't go into the specifics other than to say that if you get obnoxious, noisy people on your tour, you're stuck. And we didn't get sufficient time in Delphi but did stop by a shop on the way back that I'm sure the tour company had an arrangement with. As I'm thinking independent travel may be a lot more difficult for us in 5 or 10 years, I thought I'd see if I could handle the tour thing as an option to independent travel sometime in the future. My conclusion is that when I can't do it on my own anymore (or the afore-mentioned small group excursions), I'll stay home, thank you. I would also guess that in Oct., which is something like May as regards the number of tourist services, you won't have the selection or frequency of tours you might have in the summer, even before the cancellations for lack of demand.

Although we had not driven manual transmission for 28 years, it does start to come back to you after an hour or two. (Automatic transmissions require a rental car upgrade that doubles the price of a level 2 car and I feared maybe also would be too large to navigate the small streets in towns, as was the case with an automatic in England some years ago.) What people tend not to mention on this forum is the lack of highway names or numbers on Crete (and in other places) and the occasional absence of a directional sign at intersections. We decided to drive from Heraklion to Hania via Phaestos, against the recommendation of the car rental agent, and we did manage to get to Phaestos with only one stop for directions (we had missed a turn 6 km before). But we found the remainder of the trip to be more of an adventure than we planned. Luckily, I decided to skip a couple of other stops on the way, because we needed that time to drive the less-than-ideal route we took to Hania. Still do not know what turn we missed for the better road and where. But since the roads are not marked, the only thing we could do is turn when an arrow pointed to Rethymno, where we planned to pick up the national road for the rest of the trip. Not sure all roads lead to Rethymno, but at least two do. The road turned out to be more "exciting" than we anticipated as well as a good bit longer because it practically goes in circles in spots. But we made it well before dark so we could wend our way to our hotel at the port in Hania with plenty of light to find it - and the rare street sign. So expect an adventure or two if you drive, possibly related to having no idea where you are. Your adventure will surely be scenic, though. Surprisingly, although the guide books said the Akrotiri peninsula is poorly marked and difficult, we had no problem there and found it quite well marked.

I can't remember where the Blue Palace is located, but I suspect you might like to have a car there anyway. Since I have a family member who can sometimes get us employee/family rates at Starwood properties, I checked them out in Greece, but didn't find any located where I particularly wanted to stay. (Since my husband travels a lot, we do a fair amount of award travel redemption in Europe and I find that most of the big US chain properties are not as conveniently located as I would like.) I assume you know that there is also a Starwood hotel on Santorini, but although I enjoyed Santorini for a couple of days and it is certainly the "calendar Greece", I preferred Crete on the whole.

However, that said, I also realized on my May trip that I had fallen for the hype that the only reason to go to Greece is to go to an island. The one good thing I got from the two unpleasant tours was the discovery that there are other delightful places to go in Greece. We are returning next year and will probably spend 6-7 days driving through Epirus and Thessaly, with a little 24 hr. detour to Nafplio. I'd say if you could manage a couple of nights out of Athens, not in a Starwood property, you wouldn't go far wrong either going to the northern Peloponnese (Mycenae, Nafplio, etc.) or to Delphi/Meteora for part of the time instead of to Crete.
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Old Jul 7th, 2005, 04:01 PM
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Thanks to for the good input!

I think we will definitely cut Athens back to half the trip and visit Crete now. Also, we do not tend to be "tour" or "bus" type people so I thought the car might be the way to go in the end. Usually we don't like to get mixed in with groups or obnoxious tourists. We are very particular and want to avoid the masses. We travel shoulder seasons a lot to avoid the crowds. But like you mentioned, Polly229, we unfortunately also have a tendency to get lost in other countries so that was my only reason for considering a tour guide of some type. If we can get lost in Scotland in the roundabouts, where at least we speak the language, heaven knows what will happen in Crete! But, hey, we're on vacation and pretty savvy travelers so I'm guessing we will figure it out.

Have you heard of a website called travelinfo.gr? I have been pricing the inter-island planes everywhere (to get from Athens to Crete and back) and they seem to have the lowest fare when converted to $US$. I just wonder if they are legit? The flights they use are the same as those listed on the Aegean website but definitely better pricing. Have you all heard of them?

Also, did you find that English was spoken in Crete much?

To brotherleelove2004, thanks for all the other GREAT comments you've made to others too throughout the other greece forums. I've read alot in these forums and you have no idea how many of your suggestions we are taking into account in helping us with this trip.
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Old Jul 7th, 2005, 06:00 PM
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People involved with tourists anywhere we went spoke Greek from between "well enough to get by" to very fluent. You'll be surprised at how many of them have lived in the US for some time, then have gone back to Greece for retirement/parttime work or to open a business. (Then there was the Greek jewelry shop owner in the Plaka who lived in Australia for 20 years before returning to Greece a few years ago - an Aussie/Greek accent is a wonder to the ear!)

Now, while "lost" in the mountains, we passed through numerous tiny towns between 3 and 5 PM and never saw a living soul except the occasional driver coming the other way. Was it siesta time? But we did see signs on leaving the towns that told us where we had been (though few on entering), so we could track our progress on the map. I suspect, based on an "orientation stop" in a small town in the south (around the time we missed the road we wanted) where the taverna owners spoke minimum English but were able to show us where we were on the map, those sleeping villagers wouldn't have been any more fluent. Whether the taverna people could have told us where to turn, I don't know, but we didn't know we were going to miss/had missed the turn at that point, so didn't ask. Otherwise, we only saw and heard sheep, which I believe speak only sheep, an international language; but since they can't read maps and have probably never even traveled to the next town, it didn't much matter. I finally theorized that while Crete is the largest of the islands, it still isn't so huge that you won't ultimately find yourself SOMEWHERE even if you drive randomly, much as they used to say a monkey can ultimately write a novel if given access to a typewriter long enough. And after some wine, good food, and nice Greek music in a Hania taverna later that night, all was right with the world.

Also, since my husband doesn't read these forums or otherwise concern himself with our travel plans, I can safely say here that I took great pleasure watching a formerly proud man humble himself and ask for driving directions all over Santorini and Crete. Generally there are gas stations here and there to stop for advice. (Except on those interior mountains.) I don't ever remember his stopping for directions anywhere in the nearly 40 years I've known him. So witnessing that was worth a lot to me.

I don't think it was as bad as England, where we didn't get lost too much but did have to go round a roundabout twice a few times to pick the right road. At least you're not driving on the wrong bloody side of the road.

Haven't heard of the website you mentioned but I will certainly check it out. Hope someone else will respond here. Could use it myself next year for Rhodes/Cos flights.
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