Corfu for the first time

Kirsten, this is not the best forum to get advice on Corfu, because most of those who post here are interested in other island groups. Trip Advisor greece forum is PACKED with Corfu postings (altho a large % appear to be UK folks who have booked 2-week "holiday packages" and who want to know the price of sunlounge rental and cigarettes). If you have only 8 days in Greece it's difficult to see how you can do all 3 destinations, so widely separated ... you will lose 3 days just in transit among the trio. Look at a map! If Santorini is a Must, would you consider as your 2nd island something nearer to it, say 2 hours away by ferry? What is the attraction of Corfu? A free lodging? Relatives? We cannot help you with incomplete info -- WHEN is this trip? are flights/hotels locked in? What are your interests? (if you are an ancient-greece enthusiast, 3 days in Athens is a minimum - but of course we don't know).

How committed are you to Santorini? With just 8 days (as Janet noted minus travel time), you might consider this as an option:
Go to Athens, rent a car, stay the first night.
Drive to Igoumenitsa bright and early and then take the ferry to Corfu with your car. There is plenty to explore--beaches, ruins, shopping, history, culture, cuisine. You can easily spend 4 nights and still have much left to see and do.
If you really want to see another island, you can take a day excursion to smaller islands near Corfu. Another excursion idea is to take a day trip to Albania to see the ancient ruins that are in Butrint National Park. This will keep you from having to pack, check out, and check in at a different location and save you time for leisure.
Drive back to Athens for the final 2-3 days of your trip.

Thank you for your helpful advice . I will plan accordingly.

We just returned from five days on Corfu and didn’t have time to see everything that we would have liked, so I would suggest a minimum of four days there. We loved it! While we stayed in Corfu Town, we also took a couple of short excursions out of town. We would return. On an earlier trip, we spent four nights on Santorini. That was a fine length of time for us and we felt that we saw and did everything that we wanted.. An idea for adding in Athens is to spend one night there on your way to or coming back from the islands. You could visit the Acropolis and perhaps one museum before flying to your first island or flying home. We enjoyed the Acropolis in the early evening of our arrival day. There wasn’t a lot of people and the light was so pretty. That was in July four years ago. If you’re going in the summer, book flights to the islands early. Our island flights this year were full, with at least one of them overbooked.

I went to Corfu last summer for my honeymoon and loved it. You would easily need four days to see the sights. We took a tour to Paleokastritsa in the north west corner where there are blue grottos and a gorgeous church overlooking the sea. This tour also brought us to the main sites such as mouse island. We also did a boat tour to the nearby islands of Paxos and Anti Paxos. It was the bluest water I've ever seen. We also spent a day in Corfu town and of course you'll need another day for two for the beaches.

Our resort gave us a rent a car but, I wouldn't reccomend it as the roads are narrow, zig zagging up and down cliffs. When there's a death by car accident the Greeks like to put a tiny prayer station up and we saw those everywhere where guardrails should have been..

Anyway, Corfu is about an hour from Athens and closer than Santorini. Unfortunately, if you do either or first you'll have to back track to Athens to connect to the other island. Good luck and have fun planning!