Peloponnese and Aegina 10 days this March

Your trip sounds exhausting to me, with lots of driving. But that may work fine for your family.

Another option (although you’re quickly running out of time!) is Rhodes. It’s the second largest Greek island (after Crete). Lots of history there. The knights quarters & castle. You could visit Lindos and climb up to the Acropolis. You could take a day trip by ferry to the island of Symi. Hopefully you could work in a couple of nights on nearby Nisyros — it has an active (but not erupting) volcano that you can hike into the crater. Most amazing thing— it’s like walking on the moon.

You could fly to and from Rhodes & work out the ferries once you arrived.

Lol, omg. Ok, I have to stop laughing. Not wanting to me mean (!), just remembering all of our driving around the Peloponnese and I think you need some adjustments. By basing yourself in one place for several nights, you are actually increasing driving.
First, the Arcadia mountains (containing Dimitsana and the Temple of Apollo at Bassae - both fantastic!) are remote and the roads are narrow and winding. A cursory glance at a driving map tells me it can take you 90+ minutes one way from Olympia to Dimitsana. Let's just say 2 hours, because thats how driving in Arcadia can be. Thats 4 hours driving in one day. Why not spend that night in Dimitsana? On another day you plan to visit Olympia AND the temple of Apollo in one day. Whew. Again, a LOT off driving, especially as all this driving entails a lot of backtracking. (An important side note - do not rely on Google maps on your phone for directions. It did not know what it was dong for us and we got lost a lot and had to learn how to anticipate when Google maps was leading us astray). You could spend fewer nights in more places, treat this like the road trip it is, and drive less. Consider going from Aegina to Dimitsana (sleep), then drive the next day through the Arcadia mountains to Andritsaina (lunch) and onto the Temple of Apollo. Then drive from there to Olympia along the coastal road (because driving in Arcadia at night is not fun). Stay in Olympia that night. Tour Olympia the next day, then head back south on the coastal road to Pylos and do your two nights there. Then head to Githio, after a day in Kardamyli. From Gythio I would head to Monemvasia for the night (1), and then to Mystras the next day and sleep in Sparta (Or somewhere else). This backtracking (to and from Monemvasia and Mystras from Githio) is less concerning because the roads are so much better than those in Arcadia, so the driving won't be as arduous, so if you want to stay in Githio, ok. We loved the Peloponnese (also went to Crete and two other islands and Athens). Wish we'd spent more time in Arcadia, or at least allowed more time for how long the driving took. (For reference, we are two parents with three teens)

I know when I read my own itinerary I laugh. It sounds really ambitious to me as well. I love the suggestions for staying in Dimstana & Monemvasia. The problem I am having is that DH really doesn't like moving around that much. He would really rather only stay at 2 hotels or and do the hub and spoke method but mainland Greece does not lend it's self to that sort of vacation. So I am trying to accommodate his wish to not be packing & unpacking every night while letting us see the highlights. The other twist is he doesn't want tons of driving, so you can see I have an impossible task. So based on all of that I am trying to create a reasonable itinerary but I don't think I achieved that. ;)

Regarding Rhodes, we had considered that but we are trying to avoid the 3rd flight. (We fly from Atlanta to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Athens). It is exhausting to add another leg & again DH wanted to make it a little easier this time by not catching the 3rd flight.

If your husband (BTW that rather twee DH DD and DS-In-law thing is an old Fodor FOrum usage &a bit dated, just say husband, or Rick or RJ) .. if he hates changing hotels & also hates a lot of driving... wants to do hub & spoke ... he should not be going to Greece. He cannot transform Greece into Tuscany just by waving a wand. A lot of people also want to base on one island & return to it 4 times from 4 other islands, but we have to explain it cant be done, that's why we call it island-HOPPING, not island-Basing. Is there any way to explain it to him?

Trust me I know that Greece isn't a hub and spoke vacation. The conversation has been had ad nauseam. I was just trying to make an itinerary that didn't require 8 hotels. When we did it last time we did base in Nafplion for several days & Delphi for 2 days & Athens for several days. That worked out perfectly. So I was trying to duplicate that in a sense. We saw tons but didn't change where we slept nightly. So I will continue to tweak to come up with something manageable.

Thanks!

Good points for really trying! Athens & Nafplio ARE 2 places where you can do day trips... just as Paros & Naxos (with dedicated excursion vessels) are 2 of the few islands that enable this. I would suggest not "locking in" some of the hotel arrangements -- in March, no need anyway. Perhaps after a few days of looong drives to backtrack, hubby might see the value of just moving on!

Jean, we are mountain types. Thats where we go. And we like long road trips. And even for us the Peloponnese/Greece was a lot of driving. Its such a hard call because the Arcadia mountains are not as touristed at all compared to the other 'highlights', and we absolutely loved them and wished we'd had more time there, but the driving. The town of Olympia was meh - we actually stayed in a small untouristed village in the Arcadia mountains but close enough to that western coast road to get to Olympia as a day trip. In hindsight, we did visit Olympia in the morning of one day and Temple of Apollo in the afternoon. It worked, but was so much driving, esp. bc Google maps got us so lost (on a single track dirt road that we couldn't turn around on for about 45 minutes!). We also did part of the Menalon trail hike between Dimitsana and Stemnitsa (passing through the monastery's on the trail). If I were to do it again, I would have stayed in Dimitsana for one night, and then the little village we did stay in for 1 instead of 2.
But we went to Crete after the Peloponnese and had the same feeling. We picked 3 'bases' of 3 nights each and felt that this plan made us drive way too much. We tend not to do the hub and spoke model of travel, but ironically tried it in Greece and nope. This summer its back to moving on one direction and staying in more places. Fwiw, we arrived at Monemvasia at 5p (from Kardamyli, via Githio) and it was perfect. The rock/island was emptying out and we walked around and ate dinner for hours and then slept on the rock and departed leisurely the next morning for Mystras--

I think the Aegina trip should be dropped. While it's a lovely island it sounds like a lot of back tracking from and return to Athens. If you have your heart set on Aegina then you can take a ferry to Poros in the Argolis peninsula (part of the Peloponnese) then continue your drive onward. However I would heard straight to the Peloponnese.

I would then pick two areas to base myself and do day trips from there.

I had originally planned to stay in Kardamili and explore parts of the Mani from that area then drive to Petalidi in the Messenia area and do day trips from there. There are other options other than Petalidi but it appears to be more of Greek town than a tourist town.

Many people consider the archeological site of Messini far more impressive and less touristy than Olympia and isn't as far to drive to if you stay in south Messenia.

Thank you for all of the feedback. We are finalizing our plan now.

I am planning my own trip for May so reading along with interest, but this is one tactic I used when planning bases/long drives.
For the day we go from Nafplio (3 nights) to Kardamyli (4 nights), we stop at Mystras.
The day we go from Kardamyli to Dmitsana (2 nights), we stop at Messene.
So, even though those are long drives, they are broken up, and the driving after each site will be a nice little recovery time.
On the days we are in Nafplio, Kardamyli, and Dmitsana, driving is limited to the immediate surroundings. I looked at each segment of driving with Google Maps (I know, I know--I rounded up) to know exactly how much driving we are doing for each segment or day trip.
I am the most nervous about the driving--we have driven in Italy several times, but on easier terrain. It just seems unavoidable for this region.
It looks like you should drop at least one stop--maybe the first island and then add the island off Monemvasia if you stay there longer?