Thanks for suggestions already, we have refined our plan but are hoping for some input on this one. Some parts are definite, final number of days for some parts are tentative as we will be buying plane tickets later this week (hoping for good deals on Black Friday)
I'm primarily interested in suggestions for Crete, Rhodes and the road trip. We aren't interested in nightlife, we like historical sites & museums, wandering towns, moderate hikes, eating at smaller/local places, and we like to just wander aimlessly in towns to see what we stumble upon. We're rarely in a hurry to see a lot of stops in one day.
We have a lot of experience with long road trips and know we'd much rather not do 1 night stays. We will primarily do 3 - 4 night stays, 2 nights if it's a small town and the itinerary works best that way. It's easier to unpack once, less searching for lodging, and with a car we can do day trips. We're very experienced in driving on rural roads, including single track.
Since the road trip portion is mid-March to April 6 I'm curious about the need to book in advance. Having said that, I'm going to book Napflio and our last 3 nights, to cut down on stressing about lodging.
Here's the plan:
Athens: Feb 17 - 23, booked an Airbnb in Koukaki
Crete: Feb 23 for 10 - 12 days (depends on availability of flight leaving Crete, leaning towards 10 or 11 full days)
Rhodes: Probably just 6 nights to get 5 full days, flying from Crete
20 - 24 full days of road trip: picking up a car at the Athens airport, mid-day (assuming the flight from Rhodes works) and ending returning the car at the airport (lots of reasons, inc. cost and flight to our next stop)
Napflio for 3 - 4 nights so we can enjoy the town and do a day trip or two
Most of the rest of the road trip is not planned yet (and we may just decide once we're in Greece)
We want to make several stops on the Peloponnese (just not sure where yet), and then see as many of these places as can be fit into a decent itinerary: Delphi, Meteora, Thessaloniki.
Our final stop will be on Evia, with at least 3 nights on the southern part of the island. This is so we can have a relatively quick drive to the airport in Athens to return the car and fly to Zagreb on April 6.
Finally, yes, we do know places will be closed, there will be fewer choices for accommodations, and the weather might be cold and rainy (we're Alaskans, Greek Feb-March weather is similar to late spring-early summer for us!)
thanks for reading what I hope will be our final itinerary!