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Greece & Turkey In 14 days (Possible?)

My boyfriend and I are wanting to book a Greece holiday over the course of 14 days, June 6-20th 2019. We were hoping to visit Santorini, Naxos, Athens, and Meteroia. However, I have also wanted to see Turkey, specifically Gerome cappadocia region and possibly Istanbul. We are coming from the States, have never been to Europe, and we most likely will not be able to do a trip like this again in our 20's.

Has anyone been able to accomplish a trip like this one? Or is it completely unfeasible to do both Turkey and Greece?

We are planning on traveling Early June, entering and leaving from Athens. No details are firm but we would greatly appreciate any help or opinions!

Posted by
27122 posts

No, that is just not going to work well.

If you leave home on June 6 and return home on June 20, that means you will land in Greece on June 7 after a long, quite possibly sleepless, overnight flight. You may be barely functioning on June 7. Most of us don't count our arrival day as a real sightseeing day. We walk around outside, trying to stay awake, and then we crash early and hope to be semi-normal on Day 2. June 20 will be devoted to getting yourself to the airport and flying home. So your real, fully usable, vacation-in-Europe days are June 8 - June 19. That's just 12 days.

Unfortunately, there are no super-speedy trains to whisk you around Greece and Turkey as you would find in some western European countries. Getting out to and between the islands requires dealing with airport or ferries. On the mainland you'll probably be depending entirely on buses. ViaMichelin.com estimates the Athens-Meteora driving time (in your own car--not on a public bus making who knows how many stops) at over 4-1/4 hours one-way.

It will be a slog every time you move to a new hotel, reducing what started as a full day to just a few hours of sightseeing time. To maximum your real relaxation time, you need to minimize the number of times you change hotels.

I'll leave it to others to suggest the maximum you should attempt in the time you have, but I think Turkey is a no-go unless you want to give up most of Greece. We have some people on the forum who travel often to Greece, and they can give you a realistic idea of how much can be covered in the time you have.

One thing to keep in mind is that if your flight home is from Athens, it would be prudent to hit Athens at the end of the trip. Otherwise, you will be at risk of missing the return flight if you get stuck on your last island stop because your flight or ferry is canceled.

Posted by
11180 posts

Pick one or the other. I have been to Greece, but not Turkey. Greece is wonderful and you can easily fill your time with enjoyable activities.

Trying to do both is going to be a contest against the clock you cannot win; you will simply exhaust yourself and have no sense of enjoyment of any of it.

Early June will be a good time to go.

( Glad I am not in the Tri Cities right now; that is just miserably cold)

Posted by
5 posts

Thank ya'll so much! We have plenty to think about now. I think my boyfriend is pretty set on Greece, so we will have to go to Turkey in the near future:)

Posted by
2499 posts

You will have a wonderful time in Greece. We went on a family trip to Greece last May and everyone, including our twenty something adult children loved it.

We flew to Athens, and then to santorini on a separate ticket two hours later. That got us to our furthest detonation. We spent three nights in santorini and then ferried to Naxos. We flew back from Naxos and then rented car at airport. We drove to nafplio but you could drive to meteora. Then we drove back to airport and ended up in Athens for last three nights.

Beth

Posted by
11159 posts

Choose one country or the other. Visit the other on another trip.

Posted by
11 posts

I am going to disagree. My daughter and I spent 1 week in Greece and 1 in Turkey. I think you can do both if you want in 12 days but you might have to pare down what you see. I think you could do Santorini, Naxos and Athens. We loved Istanbul but did not make it to Cappadocia but have neighbors who took a day tour there. It depends on what you want to see and how much time you want to spend in transit.