Greek islands on your own

well, if you know your dates and are willing to make definite plans, what I did would work for you. we used a travel company (Fantasy Travel) to make the arrangements--hotel reservations, flights within Greece, car rentals, ferry reservations, transfers from ports/airports to hotels and back etc etc. While we were there, we were 'on our own' as in not with a tour group but we didn't need to negotiate the language barrier/craziness on our own. I'm not sure how much of a premium we paid, as the whole package came in within our acceptable budget so we didn't give it much more thought. But not having to worry about any of that made it completely worth it for us (3 20-something girls).

Greece has a very efficient ferry system during the summer months. If you learn to navigate this website you can check the schedules once they become available. There will be more added as the season progresses.

http://www.openseas.gr/OPENSEAS/index_en.vm

1) Select a departure port, a destination port and a travel date to see what's available on that date between the two.

2) Select a departure port out of the 'From' menu and leave the 'To' menu set to 'All'. Select a travel date and you will see all the destinations you can reach on that day from your departure port.

This early in the year all the schedules are not yet available, but you can also get an idea of what to expect in the future by using the calendar function to backtrack to the same time last year. Just don't expect it to be exactly the same.

Use 'Piraeus' for Athens.

I prefer doing the islands on my own, usually with only minimal reservations to keep flexible, and maybe best done early in the Summer or in September (avoiding August) Lee mentioned the ferry sites, those are valuable in that ferries ply routes, and unless the islands you are interested are on the same route, it may mean going back to Athens to get to the island that you can see on the horizon. Be aware that many Greek locales may be spelled differently, depending on the translation or place name the source uses;(Hania, Chania, Xania) or the port may be named differently from the island (Samos has both Vathy and Karlovassi, but just Samos does not appear on many sites) One must also be careful of similar names for very different places (Paros, Poros)...make sure you know your destination. For your itinerary, Hydros can be included with any mainland portion, Crete and Santorini are naturally grouped, as is Samos and Lipsi. For me, I might consider flying to Samos, then ferry to Lipsi and back, probably even flying to Santorini/Crete. I just am not into long ferry rides anymore. Time is another big thing to consider, for what you are proposing and including some time in Athens, you are over two weeks, probably up to three weeks. If you had visions of doing all that in a week or ten days, you need to re-calibrate. Consider finding a copy of Lonely Planet or Let's Go Greece. Both have good info and give rough schedules of ferries, at least where you can get to from which islands plus sights and hotels.