Delos on your own

[WallyNDiane]

We are in Mykonos from 7am to 6 pm. Celebrity offers a Delos tour for $99 per person. The tour starts at 8 am and is shown as a 3 1/2 hour tour.

 

Having a good guide is beneficial when touring ancient sites like Delos. A good guide fills in the blanks that the ruins can't tell by themselves.

 

I want to determine if I can do a Delos tour utilizing a guide for less money than the ship tour. I do want to allow a few hours of town walking time after the Delos tour as well. So I want to catch the first ferry to Delos allowing suffice to time both for a Delos tour as well as a town tour. I have to get some windmill photos.

 

Any suggestions are welcomed. Thanks in advance.

[cruisemom42]

Here's the website for the ferry + tours to Delos from Mykonos: https://www.delostours.gr/en/

 

You'll see they offer half-day tours, including the ferry to and from Mykonos for 50 euro. This is offered daily from May through October -- the 10:00 time should work for you. (Fair warning, if you are going during peak summer months it will be very hot on Delos with not much shade.)

 

Also, I highly recommend purchasing the Blue Guide chapter on Mykonos and Delos by McGilchrist -- you can purchase on Amazon for Kindle or as a small paperback guide. Very handy to provide more information in case you have additional time to wander on your own. There is MUCH to see on Delos if you are interested in Greek, Hellenistic or Roman ruins.

[WallyNDiane]

Thanks Cruisermom42. If I take the half day tour, it looks like it leaves at 10am and returns to Mykonos at 1:30 pm. If that is correct, will that leave sufficient time for walking around town before our 6 pm departure?

 

I will check out the guides you recommended.

 

50€ sure beats the 99€ for the ship excursion!

[cruisemom42]

It should leave plenty of time. Mykonos Town is small and the ferry dock is right in the middle of it.

[anthonyy7]

Take the private ferry and save your $$ for a nice guidebook. Plus your time on the island is limited if your on a tour and you may not see everything. Go as early as possible and bring water, hat, sunglasses.

[ABQcruiser]

I want to see Delos on our October cruise and aim at DIY but I think a guide would be good her. I found www.getyourguide.com which offers 3 variations, which differ I think by departure point (hotel, new ship port, old port/town) and run about $62-70. That includes the boat, Delos admission and museum.

[luvtravel88]

Here's the website for the ferry + tours to Delos from Mykonos: https://www.delostours.gr/en/

 

You'll see they offer half-day tours, including the ferry to and from Mykonos for 50 euro. This is offered daily from May through October -- the 10:00 time should work for you. (Fair warning, if you are going during peak summer months it will be very hot on Delos with not much shade.)

 

Also, I highly recommend purchasing the Blue Guide chapter on Mykonos and Delos by McGilchrist -- you can purchase on Amazon for Kindle or as a small paperback guide. Very handy to provide more information in case you have additional time to wander on your own. There is MUCH to see on Delos if you are interested in Greek, Hellenistic or Roman ruins.

 

I will be in Mykonos in September and am interested in going to Delos as well. I went to the Delos tours website to get info on purchasing tickets online to avoid having to wait in line and purchase tickets at the port. I found in the terms and conditions section that the tickets are virtually non refundable. You can get a refund if you need to cancel at least 7 days before your tour, but you can not do it online and you have to take the tickets somewhere. Also, they will not refund if your cruise ship is unable to stop there due to weather or sea conditions.

 

Although I wouldn't intend to cancel, things happen and because they have such stringent rules on cancelling, and I don't want to take the chance on losing 100 euros, I think we'll bite the bullet and wait in line to get tickets when we arrive in port. If they're sold out, so be it.

[cruisemom42]

I will be in Mykonos in September and am interested in going to Delos as well. I went to the Delos tours website to get info on purchasing tickets online to avoid having to wait in line and purchase tickets at the port. I found in the terms and conditions section that the tickets are virtually non refundable. You can get a refund if you need to cancel at least 7 days before your tour, but you can not do it online and you have to take the tickets somewhere. Also, they will not refund if your cruise ship is unable to stop there due to weather or sea conditions.

 

Although I wouldn't intend to cancel, things happen and because they have such stringent rules on cancelling, and I don't want to take the chance on losing 100 euros, I think we'll bite the bullet and wait in line to get tickets when we arrive in port. If they're sold out, so be it.

 

I suspect you will be fine getting your tickets on the day of your visit in September.

 

To confirm your findings, a friend and I purchased tickets for the ferry a couple of years ago but our situation was a bit different. Our ship (small) stopped at Delos in the early am and tendered passengers ashore for a half-day visit, then continued to Mykonos at around 1pm. My friend and I wanted to stay longer in Delos, so we arranged in advance to buy tickets for the return ferry from Delos to Mykonos, as we weren't sure how it would work to buy them "on the ground" in Delos.

 

As it turned out, we had just barely arrived ashore after tendering when our captain saw some water spouts and the weather predictions for tendering were not good, so he called everyone back to the ship. We were concerned that if we stayed behind, we might find the ship wasn't able to port at Mykonos either (due to weather), and we'd be stuck. So we forfeited the tickets and went back to the ship. I emailed the company and they were very nice but no refund was possible.

 

As it turned out we were able to dock in Mykonos, but the ferries stopped running in the afternoon due to the windy weather, so we wouldn't have been able to stay at Delos much longer anyway. And our loss wasn't very much, since we only paid for the one-way passage on the ferry.