Greece Turkey Adventure

There will be an Hellenic Seaways Highspeed ferry 5 days/week between Athens/Piraeus and Samos (port of Vathi), the island from which you'll need to enter Turkey for the easiest access to Ephesus. Along the way this ferry stops at Paros, Naxos and Ikaria, which would give you a good taste of the islands. If you wanted to go to Santorini it's quick and easy to get there from either Paros or Naxos on a daily basis, so a side trip is definitely do-able. Just don't try to include too many islands in your 10 days, and I will say that including Milos poses a completely different set of logistical problems time-wise in late May, as you'll have to co-ordinate the connection to Paros carefully before you can get to Samos. Those schedules you need to be able to access for May probably won't be available for another month or so. http://www.gtp.gr

Hi Diane,
We're planning a trip to Turkey for May and are still in the "research" phase of planning. We've found that if you enter Turkey near Ephesus (traveling from Greece), the distance to Istanbul is a 10-12 hour bus ride or a flight from Izmir to Istanbul--the distances between cities in Turkey are farther than I realized. We were initially thinking of going to Greece and Turkey but because of the distances decided to just focus on Turkey for this trip and save Greece for another.