ap101

My husband and I are planning a trip to Turkey end of May 2014. We are thinking 4 nights in Istanbul and 3 nights in Cappadocia. We want to end our trip on a Greek Island for 3 nights, but we are having trouble deciding between Crete (elounda) and Santorini.

We have never traveled to any Greek island, so we feel like Santorini is a must, but it seems so touristy and it might be a little cold to enjoy the beach.

Given we have only 3 nights, want to experience great food, beach, and local culture, would you recommend crete or santorini? (Other Greek islands are not an option because we are using our points for hotel)

Also, we gathered from our research, every Greek island slightly differs in the cuisine they offer. What's the difference between the food in santorini and crete and which island has better authentic food?

dreamon

How do you plan to get from Cappadocia to Crete or Santorini? Neither are conveniently located for your itinerary unless you fly (and not familiar enough with flights to know where you'd fly from). Both islands are utterly different. With Crete (which is beautiful), you often feel as though you're not on an island at all. Santorini is unique but over-visited. I think this itinerary risks spending too much time enroute. If you want beach I'd head to a beach on the Turkish coast and leave Greece for another time. Also, my very hazy memory of Eloundra says that it's a bit of a resort town so you might want to check that out - I could be wrong. I guess I'd be asking why Greece and not more time in Turkey? What is it that you're looking for?

I understand the desire to use points but I wouldn't let it dictate where you go if that means long journeys and an itinerary that doesn't really fit together.

As for food, I can't really comment except to say that whenever a place has more tourists than locals the food changes accordingly. Like anywhere it comes down to individual restaurants more than anything else.

ap101

Thank you for your response.

We were planning to fly to all of our destinations so that we don't waste any time enroute. We started looking into crete and santorini because we thought the difference between flying to santorini / crete is not much in comparison to flying to south turkey to get to the beaches. That way we can experience a little bit of greek culture and food.

Quite honestly, I did look into Turkish beaches and they didnt seem to be as beautiful as the greek beaches. Maybe I didn't look into it as much as I should have. However, I did look into it again after reading your response and decided to change my itinerary.

Now we are thinking, fly into istanbul. Go straight to cappadocia (3 nights). Overnight bus to Lycian coast (3 nights). Fly back to istanbul (4 nights)

This seems to logistically make more sense. What are your thoughts?

Also, where off the Lycian coast do you think our base should be? Again, we want to go where there are less tourists, experience local culture, picturesque beaches and fantastic food.

So far, I'm looking into fethiye, kas, patara, oludeniz, olympos, kaya koyu, and kabak.

grandmere

Santorini, with its caldera, is stunningly beautiful, despite the tourists. I love Crete, too, but if you want a truly Cretan experience, I would not stay in Elounda.

brotherleelove2004

Flights between Turkey and Greece are almost non-existent except for between Istanbul and Athens, so to get to either island from Istanbul means a plane change in Athens. During the summer season you can also fly from Istanbul to Mykonos, which is fairly close to Santorini, but that doesn't begin until sometime in mid-June. If you want to go to either island you're going to have to return to Istanbul for those flights or fly south to Bodrum or Marmaris and cross to Rhodes where you can catch a flight to Crete (Sky Express) or a ferry to Santorni. Sky Express is slow to publish their seasonal schedule and so far I'm not seeing anything for May, although on their website they're mentioning flights in March. A bit confusing. There is a Blue Star car ferry every M,W,F that leaves Rhodes at 4pm, arriving at Santorini around 1am on the way to Athens. Not the best time to arrive, but by ferry it's apparently your only choice this year so far. http://www.gtp.gr

Crete is huge and it takes a minimum of a week with a rental car just to barely scratch the surface. Save Crete for another time.

Oludeniz, near Fethiye on the the south coast of Turkey is one of the most beautiful beaches in the Med. http://tinyurl.com/qg2nhdb