Friends going to Turkey & Greece
 

Flying to Istanbul on 7/17
Flying out of Athens on 7/30

My friend and I are thinking of taking this route:

Istanbul -> Bodrum -> Kos -> Mykonos -> Santorini -> Athens

Any recommendations? A lot of the guides we've found are for romantic vacations, which we're trying to avoid :) Does it sound like we have enough time to visit all these spots?

Thanks for any help!
-Craig

what about cappadocia?

2 weeks (minus all the transit time involved) for 2 cities in Turkey at opposite ends of the country, 3 islands AND Athens? Bad idea. You'll be moving around way too much.

[To clarify: from Kos you'd first be stopping at Santorini, then from Santorini you can take a highspeed cat to Mykonos.]

Craig

We are doing the opp direction of the trip from Greece to Turkey. After spending a ton of time to figure out island hopping & ferry connections we found it best to fly between the two . My suggestion is to cut out bodrum- kos as they are at the other end as Brotherleelove pointed out.
Take a flight from Istanbul to Athens n move on to the islands from there.

Thanks for your responses. We figured we'd fly from Istanbul to Bodrum. Our friends from Turkey told us not to miss it. The other can't-miss destination seems to be Mykonos.

I'll look into flying from IST to ATH and see if that helps make connections to Mykonos easier. Doing that, though, it seems like we'd only get to see Istanbul, Mykonos, and Athens.

In past years AtlasJet has offered charter flights from Istanbul to Mykonos during the summer peak season. You might keep an eye out on their website or send them an email to see if that's going to be offered again this year.

Bodrum and Kos: two package holiday destinations best avoided, IMO. Why not go from Istanbul to Kusadasi, visit the ruins at Ephesus, then take a ferry to Samos in Greece? From Samos, hop on the Hellenic Seaways ferry <i>Nissos Mykonos</i> to Naxos or Paros. From either of those islands there are connections to Santorini and Mykonos.

N.B.: Naxos and Paros are worthy destinations in their own right. :-)

Bortherleelove2004, as far as my investigation Atlas will do the same this summer season in July & August flying to Mykonos.

Greetings,
Murat

Question: are your friends from turkey who told you not to miss Bodrum thinking of a standard beach-resort holiday such as they might take, or a must-see for someone from US trying to do a "highlights" tour. These are different objectives. And as heimdall says, these are "package-tour" spots which will not give a true flavor of the countries.

I must disagree that Mykonos is a don't-miss. I found Mykonos to be the most touristy and the least interesting of all the Greek islands, but of course that's JMO. From Bodrum or Kos you could take a ferry to Rhodes which I thought was many times nicer than Mykonos.

Thanks, Murat, Best wishes!