Crete and Rhodes together?

Crete and Rhodes are connected daily by an overnight ferry about 12 hours. Rhodes to Crete is a day ferry return.
We love Crete. It has several Venetian era fortresses all over the island. You will find cities like Chania and Rethymnon have lovely old town and harbours for an urban experience while in South west Crete you will find mountains plunging into the very blue sea, small villages and beaches.
Rhodes of course has its old town and the acropolis at Lindos. We enjoyed Rhodes but Crete is a bit wilder and diverse in the landscape.
I have to admit we have never gotten to East Crete. I am talking about the West.
Herei s what both are like.
Western Crete http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanbr54/sets/72157632115757899/
Crete Archeological sites https://www.flickr.com/photos/stanbr54/sets/72157645085297380/
Crete Libyan Sea villages https://www.flickr.com/photos/stanbr54/sets/72157645487373222/
Lindos and Rhodes http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanbr54/sets/72157634754696058/

Thanks Stan; so you think it is practical to combine the two? Your flickr stream is very interesting and informative too...

If a 12 hour ferry ride is a good use of your time and you really want to do both islands then it is OK.
Many people just spend two weeks on Crete or 10 days on Crete and then 4 days in Santorini which is a more common island combination.

not sure the ferry ride is what I would pick, but my understanding(without having delved into it too deeply while doing initial background) is there are several local airlines that fly between the two(<2hrs)? AegeanAir, Olympic, SkyExpress? That seems to be the way to go, rather than take 2 hours out of the trip. And it looks to be at a fairly reasonable cost.

Santorini, because of the tourist-heavy nature(and resulting cost increases)is probably something we could manage to take a pass on.

Sorry,, previous post should say "take 12 hours out of trip". ooops.

Rather stupid of me to ignore the flight options. In fact that is exactly what we did a few years ago. We caught the 6am flight from Chania Crete to Athens on Aegean then the 8am flight to Rhodes. We were picking up our rental car in Rhodes by 9:30 and at our hotel in Lindos by 11.

We were signed up with Aegeans web site and when we got a notification of a seat sale we booked the flights quite inexpensively.
Aegean owns Olympic so just do booking through Aegean. We have never used Sky Express they have never had their schedule out early enough so I end up getting Aegean seat sales.

Stanbr, are you sure that 12 hour ferry is daily? If you are referring to Prevelis it actually runs once per week, on Saturdays. I agree a flight would be preferable, particularly one which goes direct rather than connecting in Athens. Aegean Airlines usually has one direct flight per day from Heraklion with an A320 jet, taking only 50 minutes. I believe Sky Express has a turpoprop on that route.