Traveling to Greece from Italy

Flying from Venice to Crete with a plane change in Athens is probably the most efficient use of your time. Check with Aegean Airlines and Olympic Air. Otherwise you can take a ferry to Patras or Igoumenitsa on the west coast of Greece then a bus into Athens for another ferry or flight to Crete.

I also suggest flying. Easy Jet and Ryan Air each have a direct flight from Rome to Crete ($125 on July 5); see www.skyscanner.com as a search engine. An overnight ferry from Venice to Patras takes more than 24 hours and still doesn't get you to your Athens or another ferry connection. See www.superfast.com and/or www.greekferries.gr for ferry schedules.

At the end of a cruise early September, I am booked on Air One (an offshoot of Alitalia) from Venice to Athens and then Athens to Chania in Crete by Aegean. Total cost on Air One was 162 Euro and 62 Euro on Aegean. I did look at going by ferry but it was time consuming just to get to Athens.

Not knowing your travel dates this might not apply, but if you can possibly leave for Crete from Rome I'm seeing some fantastic rates on Blue Panorama Airlines for July, €84 one-way per person.

Theresa,
Our travel agent booked us from Rome to Athens on Aegean rather than Olympic, because he claims Olympic tends to cancel flights unexpectedly. Not the end of the world if that's true, but if you have a tight connection, potentially problematic. Would love to hear verification or contradiction on his view.

Aegean and Olympic have recently merged, and right now customers of both airlines are complaining of canceled flights and/or changed departure times, so regardless of which company you choose keep a sharp eye out on their websites for changes that might affect you. Otherwise you might not be notified in a timely fashion to make the necessary adjustments to your itinerary.