Independent Travellers Greek Island Hopping 2000: The Budget Travel Guide

Probably most value to those using the ferry service, but excellent none the less for others getting around more than one island.


Indispensable   March 13, 2001
D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful

You don't need it if you're going on a cruise (it's rather snooty about cruises, with that backpacker reverse snobbery)or if you're going to fly to one island and stay there. In fact the details about the boats and timetables may be too much. If you're moving from island to island independently you have to have it. It's the only one that tells you about the boats themselves. Reading this book could even save your life My favorite comment in the 1999 edition was about the boat then called the Golden Vergina. "a large grime bucket-she has inthe past shuddered along, not thanks to an excess of engine vibration but rather with the collective disgust of her passengers. thanks to the conditions on board ... better than no boat all but only just." She was renamed the Express Santina and if you read about the Paros shipwreck you know the rest. 80 were drowned.


Better than ever   June 7, 2000
D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Indispensable if you are moving from island to island on your own. Package tourist or cruisers can manage without it. I have always enjoyed the accurate details on the boats themselves. This 2000 edition has great WEB sites to explore. Maybe it needs more about Athens airport and the mystifying Olympia terminal. Flights from New York or London to the islands are not listed on Flifo. You have to go to the Olympic Airlines WEB site and get the domestic timetable of flights from Athens. Even flying Olympic from London you have to check in again as a domestic passenger and then go through security and then you find a row of gates with numbers and names of islands. It's simple if you're not half asleep. The first class lounge (ok - not real island hopping but I'm 65) is hidden at the end of the row AFTER security. On the flights that stop at Thessalinika you have to go through passport control twice.


Better than ever   June 7, 2000
D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful

Indispensable if you are moving from island to island on your own. Package tourist or cruisers can manage without it. I have always enjoyed the accurate details on the boats themselves. This addition has great WEB sites to explore. Maybe it needs more about Athens airport and the mystifying Olympic Airlines terminal. Flights from New York or London to the islands are not listed on Flifo. You have to go to the Olympic Airlines WEB site and get the domestic timetable of flights from Athens. Even flying Olympic from London you have to check in again as a domestic passenger and then go through security and then you find a row of gates with numbers and names of islands. It's simple if you're not half asleep. The first class lounge (ok - not real island hopping but I'm 65) is hidden at the end of the row AFTER security. On the flights that stop at Thessalonika you have to go through passport control twice.


Could use more detail   January 25, 2000
9 out of 16 found this review helpful

While I found this book to be mildly adequate, I found others to be much better. The detail that it provides is simply not sufficient.