pdmlynek

What a coincidence. I am getting ready to head to Perth, and just talked last night to fabricator of GVM of the ute that I am renting. 🙂

Look, you are going to have to do some digging. Who did you call at Juneau? When I tried to make reservations, nothing came back either, but I just called the local branch of the rental agency, and had them open up their rental shack that was on the dock. From Google maps, it appears that the car rental shacks are still there.

We rented a car from one of the regular car rental agencies (Avis, Herts, or Budget, can't remember which one), and they all had cars available at the cruise ship dock. No reason to go to the airport. It was about 50-60 USD, but that was a few years back.

How are the cruiselines involved? Don't you just book the cars through Budget, Avis, or Hertz? We rented a car in Juneau for about 50 to 60 USD.

Congratulations on turning 40! Hope your celebration is a happy one. To be honest, I'd recommend skipping all of these, and do something on your own. I understand that the cruise lines are just trying to make money off you, but those excursions sound silly. All three places that you've mentioned are great to do on your own. In Skagway, walk around the kitchy town, then walk up to the Gold Rush Cemetery, walk up to Lower Reid Falls, Upper Reid, then walk above the town to lower Dewey Lake before dropping down to the ship. In Juneau, rent a car, and drive to Mendenhall Glacier, hike above it, see the visitor center, hike to Nuget Falls, drive back, walk about Juneau before getting on the ship. In Ketchikan there is lots to see in downtown. Grab a bus to Totem Bight S.P., See various totem pole museums, go for a hike above the city.

What do you mean by "Anchorage"? Cruise ships sail to either Whittier or Seward. Or does your ship sail around the Kenai peninsula to Anchorage? And yes, like most people, we've stayed in both Anchorage and in Vancouver for a few days before and after the cruise. Please read through this forum and ask away! 🙂

I am not sure why that would be an issue. It is just donkey poop. It is not nasty as human or dog poop. Step over it or into it, and go on. It is just natural, normal part of life -- nothing to worry about. As far as slippery, given that one will be walking about Santorini anyway, one should wear good hiking boots. If one wears trainers, tennis shoes, or sandals, yes, one will have problems with the trail being slippery. But, to each one's own.

We had 9 people too. We just grabbed 3 taxis. Easy. @PORT ROYAL is correct: have the front desk get you taxis rather than try to get ones yourselves. It was surprisingly cheaper for us for the hotel's front desk to order 3 taxis then when we tried to do it ourselves. Each taxi from Plaka was about 17 or 18 EUR.

I agree. The National Archaeology Museum in Athens is terrific. Whereever you travel in Greece, there is a local archaeologic museum, where they show you artifacts from local sites, "exdept the best pieces have been hauled away to the National Archaeology Museum." However, it is not huge. Maybe 60 to 80 rooms. Nowhere close to the national museum in Paris, Washington, London, Berlin, Vienna, etc. It is doable in a day.

I agree with @John Bull. You do not need to worry about the cable car queue; just walk up. I am in my late 50s, not any great shape, and I found it to be a pleasant 40 minute walk. Why so many people who are in much better shape than me eschew the walk up is puzzling.

I think that the hot springs and active volcano is on Nea Kameni or Palia Kameni, which as two small islands in the caldera. I can't tell you much about it, because we dropped the idea of going there early on. The problem is that there is so much to see on Santorini, that visiting either Kameni would take a big chunk of your short time. We decided that it was not worth it for us.

Well, Santorini will be overpriced. That's just normal. On Santorini you can get around easily by public busses. I recommend doing that. We took a bus to Oia, came back and then took another bus to Akrotiri, and came back. On Rhodos we rented a car and drove to Lindos. It was great. Then we drove back and saw more of Rhodos town. On Mykonos we spent most of our time in Delos. There are no taxis in Myconos (well, 30 for 15,000 visitors), no Uber, so either you walk or take public trasport. You could take a public bus to a beach, but please remember that there are two bus stations in the town of Mykonos. Finally, I agree with @Hlitner. Read up on this. Your questions are just too general.

Good question. Yes, Athens is a walkable city. Most of the sites interesting to tourists is downtown, within a km or two from each other. Just make sure that your hotel is located somewhere downtown as well.

The sunsets in Greek Islands are beautiful. However, the problem with the sunset at Santorini is that the ship is in the caldera, meaning that the view of the sunset will be blocked by either Thirasia or Tholos Naftilos. Given that you've looked up the sunset time, you may also want to note the alzimuth of the sunset, and compare it to the position of the ship when you drop anchor in the morning. Alternatively, you could do what @MeHeartCruising suggested, and during the sunset don't look towards the sun, but away from it.

Although I understand the political motivation behind this, I am not sure what the point of this is. Nor do I think it wise. When we think of ancient history, our perception is shaped in a large part of what we see in our museums, or what our parents, grandparents saw in museums that was local to them. What our college professors saw in museum, what the text book writers saw in museums. A visit to an Ancient Greek section of a museum in London, Chicago, New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, etc. is an advertisement for people to visit Greece (or Egypt, Rome, etc.) Indeeed, 25% of Greece's GDP is derived from tourism. I like visiting Greece, in part, because I love Ancient History. How much tourism would there be if people outside of Greece would be ignorant about Ancient Greece, just like today they are ignorant of, for example, the Shunga Empire, Rashidun Caliphate, or Mali Empire because we just don't see their artifacts in museums? And let's suppose that some artifacts are returned. So what? Greece is deluged by Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Greek artifacts. There are hundreds of Ancient Greece museums all over Greece. Every county or town in Greece has a museum of Ancient Greece; heck, there is even an archeological museum in the Athens Airport. Returning all of the artifacts is not going to enrich Greece in any depreciabe amount and the rest of the world would be much poorer because of it. There has got to be a better way.

Although I could give you a recommendation on the hotels that we've stayed at (namely, Athens Lodge, Odeon, and Hotel Byron, each of which was wonderful), I think that this depends on your travel style. There are hundreds of hotels in Athens catering to every class of traveler. Just look through a travel sites, such as booking.com to find a hotel that suits you and reserve it.

Well, of course. I agree. However, since this is a forum for cruising, I think that it makes sense to forcus on islands that are visited by cruise ships. 🙂

Thanks for the clarification. You are going to see very little in the day and a half. You really need at least a week to see Athens before it makes sense for you to spend the time to venture to other places. Visiting some of the different museums neighborhoods, archeological sites, etc. will take all 2 1/2 days.

To be honest, if you really want to sightsee outside of Athens, then you should do that first, then come back to Athens and see Athens, and continue with sightseeing Athens when you get back from your cruise. Drive from the ATH airport directly to Nafplion or Delphi. Things go wrong, and you do not want to get stuck someplace right before your flght back home.

We did two weeks in Greece prior to our cruise last June, and did all (except Osious Lukas) that you've mentioned. It was wonderful. A couple of points. (a) I am not sure how long "several days" is. If it is less then about 5, then I'd say, just stay in Athens. there are so many things to see in Athens, that nothing really compares. It makes little sense to devote limited time to driving around. Just stay in Athens, see the Acropolis, and all the various museums that Athens has to offer. (b) I like your first option. Those things are quite close to Athens, and can be done easily, along with Epidavros and Tiryns, in 2 to 3 days. (c) Mycenae is one of the top sites in Greece, but both Epidavros and Tiryns are also very nice sites. (d) I'd even prefer Epidavros to the Ancient Corinth. The Ancient Corinth site is fine, but it is not so different from the dozen sites that you'd see in Athens. (e) The Corinth Canal was closed for several years due to a landslide, so you won't see any boat traffic. I am not sure if it will be cleared by the time you go. Nonetheless, it is a nice site to stop by, because it is on the way to the Peloponese peninsula anyway. (f) The several sites in Delphi are wonderful. Delphi is also one of the best sites to see. But it is more expensive time wise to get to Delphi than option 1. Good luck, and let us know how it was once you get back!

Also, out of all the islands that we've visited during our cruise (Patmos, Rhodos, Mykonos, Corfu, Kefalonia, and Santorini), Kefalonia was our favorite.

I have not seen any such tour, but maybe you'll be lucky and find one. You do not write how much time you have on Kefalonia. We had 8 hrs, and we wanted to something similar to what you suggest, but independently, but we could not get that done. Here is the problem: Kefalonia is huge. It is not like Santorini or Mykonos; it takes many hours on winding roads to get to the other side of the island. You really should take a week to see it properly. There are many things that we wanted to see, but had time only for a few. In the 8 hrs on Kefalonia, we rented 2 cars, and did Argostoli > Asos > Fiskardo > Myrtos beach > Argostoli. We spend maybe 1h30 hrs at Fiskardo, and 1/2 hr each at Asos and Myrtos. We did hurry a lot. There would be no way for us to have done the Melissani Lake in such a short time. I'll defer to SummmerInKefalonia, but to me, a person who does not want to see things through a windshield but does not linger around too much either, if you want to see Melissani Lake, you should do Sami instead of Fiskardo, Sami Acropolis instead of Asoss, and Antisamos beach instead of Myrtos. The advantage of this plan over what we did is that you won't spend as much time in a car as we did. But there are many other possibilities.

Sorry that I did not get to reply to you until now. I am not a frequent reader of cruise critic. 😞 Just like in any major European city, between the airport and downtown there is public transport in form of a public bus and metro. You can do regular city buses or metro between downtown and the airport in Athens as well. But that type of transport is not what we are discussing. There are special Express "X" buses that go between the airport, downtown and the port. X80: Piraeus <--> downtown Athens X95: downtown Athens <--> airport X96: Piraeus <--> Airport When we disembarked in Piraeus, we found buses to downtown and the airport waiting for passengers, and the passangers were also waiting for them. Good luck!

That depends on your travel style. If you are trying to squeeze out of your trip as much as possible, then yeah, you could spend an hour or two sightseeing Athens. However, most people would just go to the airport. We too had a flight around 14:00, but because we've spent lots of time in Athens prior to the cruise, there was nothing that we really had to see after the cruise, and thus elected to have a big breakfast, leisurely get off the ship, take a bus downtown, and 30 minutes later a bus to the airport. If you really want to see something of Athens to squeeze the most out of your time in Athens, be one of the first to get off the ship, hire a taxi for the day, have him drive you to the site that you've selected, sightsee while he waits for you with your luggage, then go with him to the airport. Alternatively, be one of the first to get off the ship, catch a bus to Syntagma Square, store luggage there, sightsee, then catch a bus or a metro to the airport. Our contingency plans called for doing just this, and here are facilities close to the drop off point on Syntagma square: - The Lockers Syntagma - Automated Luggage Storage; Kolokotroni 9, Syntagma, Athina, off Stadiou, off Syntagma Square; across from National Historical Museum, 37.9773°N 23.7325°E; +30 693 241 2302 - Lockers4All, 2 Nikis str, Athina 105 57, Greece, +30 694 562 4229; 37.9762°N 23.7334°E - Luggage storage in Athens, Nikis 17, Athina 105 57, Greece; +30 21 0322 3531; 37.9745°N 23.7331°E If you do decide to sightsee Athens, using either a taxi or buses, what do you see? If you plan everything correctly, you could visit the Acropolis; Acropolis opens at 8:00, so if you get there at 7:45, buy your tickets, you could do it. The entrance is only 1.4 km walking from Syntagma Square, a 15 minute jog. You could do the Acropolis in an hour. Good luck!

I too concur with others that one has to be on one's toes about unscrupulous vendors. I agree. However, there is more at play here. Like it or not, the beaches on the western half of the couthern coast of Mykonos are considered the playground of the rich. The homes that you see above these beaches rent for 6,000 to 12,000 Euros/Dollars per night. These ridiculouos prices, such as 40 EUR/beer, are not something out of the ordinary for the decamillionaires and centimillionaires (or wannabes) that frequent these beaches.