Hi All,
Two general questions: 1) Looking for general feedback on visiting Athens/Delphi/Hydra in late May (thinking Memorial Day), and 2) taking a quick glance at airfare around this time next year (2015), I'm seeing prices around $1800 per person, which seems really high. Is that typical of fare pricing for late Spring? Or is it that because I'm just checking prices too far in advance?
Thanks!
Of course it's going to depend on your travel dates but Orbitz.com is showing a round-trip from Seattle to Athens in late-May for $1,491.79, Jet Blue to New York and Turkish Airlines to Athens, in 21 hours, which is pretty good considering you have to change planes in Istanbul.
I flew from Seattle on KLM/Delta to Amsterdam and then to Athens in mid-May of this year and paid just under $2,000/person - coach so you finding a fare of $1800 is not bad. However, as the other poster found, you can fly a different (2) airlines with two stops for a lot less. We go to Europe every summer and prefer to fly European airlines so we have no stops in the US. We also book our whole flight on one airline to save any connection or baggage problems that we have never experienced in 12 years. However, once in Europe we are often shifted to one of our airlines local airlines. We have no preference for which European airlines we fly but try to book one that gets us to whatever city we want to spend time in after taking a RS tour elsewhere. Bulgaria next year.
I visited Athens, Hydra and Nafplio (but not Delphi) in late May 2012. Weather was great, restaurants and sights were open, and public transit worked well. It wasn’t crowded and Hydra hotel prices were still off-season rates. Airfare that year was under $1,000, but May airfares I saw both last year this year were in the $1,300-$1,500 range (from east coast). No way to be certain whether 2015 airfares will come down from the $1,800 you’re seeing now, but dropping oil prices probably reduce the likelihood they'll go up. My strategy on airfare is to decide on a price I’m willing to pay, buy tickets as soon as I see that price and never second-guess myself by checking to see if I could have gotten a better deal.
