greek island cruise recommendations

hannah29_2

hi we are planning our trip to greece next year in the motorhome....the drive and ferries are all organised however we are interested in leaving the van and doing a cruise round some of the islands for about 5-7 days can anyone recommend a company thats good value.....we have children so the boat needs to be family friendly too
hannah

lowbrim

Have you looked at http://www.easycruise.com/ not used them but looking at what you want I would have thought ideal

mummytofour

hannah29 wrote: »

hi we are planning our trip to greece next year in the motorhome....the drive and ferries are all organised however we are interested in leaving the van and doing a cruise round some of the islands for about 5-7 days can anyone recommend a company thats good value.....we have children so the boat needs to be family friendly too
hannah

Hiya!
Would you mind giving me the details of your trip, how you are getting to Greece etc? I have this silly idea that we are going driving for 6 weeks over the summer and Greece is top of the list but I have not planned the details yet.
I would be so grateful, if you could help
Thank you and i hope you have a fab cruise.

hannah29_2

its all in the air at the moment but so far the plan is to drive down to venice and get an overnight ferry to patras. because we have the motorhome we can sleep in that en route and also sleep in it on the overnight ferry. we do love motorhoming but i fancied a bit of a break from the kids and a change, so hopefully we will leave the van for a week and maybe do a cruise from venice and back or one just round the greek islands. we will then spend the rest of the time camping and moving around as it suits. we are also doing this during the summer hols
hannah

davidlizard

As well as Venice, there are a number of other Italian Adriatic ports that do the Patras trip - Ancona, Bari, Brindisi - depends how far you want to drive down Italy. Venice is worth a good couple of days. You probably already know that I guess!

If you get the right boat from the right port, you may get one that stops of at one or more of the Ionian Islands (Corfu, Kefalonia and the like) and spend a few days there - then hop over to the mainland on a domestic boat and continue as before.

We go to Greece every summer for the best part of a month - we see a fair few people on the ferries with camper vans - have you ruled out actually taking the camper van on an internal ferry? There are plenty of options if you go that way - and some of the islands are certainly big enough to warrant stays of more than a couple of days.

There are also a number of islands very close to the mainland that can be easily reached by ferry (often a landing craft type boat) or even a bridge or causeway - many of the Saronic islands can be reached in such a manner, Thassos in the north and also Lefkas and some of the other Ionian islands are also only a short trip from the mainland.

Just a few thoughts.

hannah29_2

thanks very much for that david, things are moving now. we are driving down to genoa in the camper and parking it for a week whilst we take a med cruise taking in marseille, barcelona, tunis, malta, rome and back to genoa. the plan is to then collect the camper and possibly head for brindisi and catching a ferry to corfu to start with. stay there touring for a week or so and then island hop with the camper as much as possible. we have a 3 year old so the idea with the med cruise is to give me a bit of a break and time to chill as she will join in with kids clubs for a couple of hours for the odd day. we will also take some tent stuff with us so if any of the ferries do not take campers or are majorly expensive we can still island hop and just use the tent! we also want to do a few water parks whilst in greece so any you can recommend would be good
hannah

mummytofour

Wow you have some amazing plans! I really wanna go now. As a student family we have a long summer holiday and it would be nice to use it.

hannah29_2

has got to be better weather than here in the uk for the last few years.....we tend to do more winter holidays and ski from the motorhome, but decided this year we will minimise the skiing a bit to save some money and go somewhere hot for the summer. its also an experience for the kids and with having the camper its not much more expensive than staying at home for the summer
hannah

davidlizard

Sounds good! Cannot help with the water parks - we make do with the sea!

Re the ferries - most of the boats are like our cross channel ferries (in fact, a fair number were cross channel ferries!) Anyway, virtually all of them are capable of carrying medium size lorries (and there always seems to be a cement mixer or two on board!) - to get produce, materials etc to and from the islands, so a camper van will be no problem - I guess the main limiting factor will be cost. Theres several a day from Athens to the most popular islands, and usually the vehicle decks do not appear overly full, but travelling with a vehicle is something I have not done often.

If you leave the camper behind, accomodation is reasonably prices - we expect o pay around 40 euros a night for a decent apartment with two bedrooms (for the kids), kitchenette, air con, telly and the like, which may be more cost effective than taking the camper - guess that depends on how long you will stay on an island for. Suggest pick up a copy of the Greek Island Hopping book.

Have a good holiday!