Hi. I am planning a trip to Italy, Greece, Egypt and (hopefully) Turkey for December 16 - January 10. The plane ticket has already been purchased.
However, I have been reading a lot about how winter is not the time to visit Greece: boats are infrequent, hotels shut down, shops closed, ect.
My plan is to go by ferry from Bari to Greece. My question is how much trouble I will have getting to Santorini, Crete, and Rhodes -- and from there, if I want to visit the Aegean part of Turkey (Ephesus is one my main destinations), how should I proceed? I would rather cut out Santorini than Ephesus, but I am willing to cut Turkey if absolutely necessary.
How would you recommend getting to Egypt, keeping in mind that it will be winter? I know that some travellers simply fly from Athens to Cairo, but I don't know if I could afford that.
Any advice on travelling in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt during December and January would be greatly appreciated?
I am in Turkey at the moment and we went the Santorini, Crete,Rhodes,Turkey route. It was not all that easy in high season, so I think you will definitely have your challenges at that time of year. YES, things are closed down then and the weather can be quite cold in some places.
I would talk to the people on the Greek part of the Fodor's forum as many live there and have more specific details than I do.I am guessing that you might have to think about planes instead of ferries ( it took us 24 hrs just to get from Crete to Rhodes and it is not that far).
Samos to Ephesus is close, but getting a ferry out of samos to anywhere else even in high season is a challenge.
I imagine there must be something for the xmas crowd, but much of the western Turkey coast is closed from Oct to April and I hear it gets quite cold.
Based on my initial planning, I already think I will have to cut Egypt from my itinery -- too difficult in both financial and logistical terms.
I am scheduled to fly into and out of Rome (but am looking into the possibility of chaging my departure to Istanbul).
The thing about Greece in winter is that I keep reading conflicting accounts, some that advise you to avoid both the mainland and islands for the entire winter, and other things like this: http://www.greektravel.com/winter/
My current questions are as follows:
--Is it equally possible to get from Patras to Nafplion via train or bus as to Athens?
--Will bus services to the surrounding sites (Mycanae, Corinth, Delphi, ect.) be available on winter days other than Dec. 25 and Jan. 1?
--For the Peloponnese sites, would you recommend using Nafplion as a base rather than Athens?
--Assuming I can get to Santorini (which it is looking like I can), would the Minoan archeological site of Akrotiri be open?
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