The usual first answer to a week in Greece is to fly into one island and stay there, and it is the wrong answer if the week is short. Ferries in this country are the actual transport network, and treating them as a day-trip extra means spending half the trip in an airport queue instead of on the water. I would build the week around the crossings from the start.
Athens, two days and no more
Two days in Athens covers the four things that matter and leaves you with a city that is pleasant rather than exhausting. The Acropolis and the Parthenon sit on the same rock, and the first entry of the morning is the difference between twenty minutes in the sun and two hours in it. Hadrian's Arch and the Temple of Zeus are ten minutes apart at the bottom of the same slope, so they go in the same walk rather than on separate afternoons.
Base yourself within walking distance of the Acropolis metro stop, which puts the old Plaka streets, the bus to the port and the airport coach all inside one neighbourhood. I do not bother with a hotel near Syntagma, because the extra twenty minutes of travel buys nothing except a louder street.
Getting to Piraeus, and choosing the crossing
The port is not one dock but several, and the terminal you need depends entirely on the operator. I go to the port the evening before and look at the board in person rather than trusting a screenshot, because gates move and the difference between them is a kilometre of concrete.
- Take the metro to Piraeus on line 1 and get off at the stop named for your gate, not for the town.
- Buy the ferry ticket at the counter on the day, or online if you are travelling in July and August. High season sailings sell out; shoulder season does not.
- Be on the quay thirty minutes before departure. Late boarding is not a formality here, the ramp goes up and the boat leaves.
- Take the deck space if the forecast is rough. Inside on a lower deck in a storm is a mistake you only make once.
The crossing to Crete runs overnight in most timetables, which is the efficient version: you lose one night's bed and gain a full day at the other end. The stormy crossings are the ones people warn about, and the warning is fair, so take the smallest pill you own and stay on deck where you can see the horizon.
Crete: land at Heraklion, leave it fast
Heraklion is the capital and the arrival point, and it is a working port town rather than a postcard. I give it a morning for the market and the harbour wall and then move on, because the island's reasons for existing are south and west of there.
South of the airport road the coast drops into small bays with tavernas at the back of the sand. Matala is the one everybody has heard of: a line of caves cut into the headland that travellers slept in through the nineteen sixties and seventies. Sleeping in them stopped long ago and the site is fenced now, but the walk out to the headland still takes twenty minutes from the village and the caves are visible from the path.
Two nights is the right number on Crete. One is a transit, three makes you late for the boat, and two leaves an afternoon for a beach that is not on the road you arrived by.
Rhodes, and the crossing nobody schedules
Heraklion to Rhodes is another sea leg, this time into the Dodecanese, and it is the crossing that most often changes shape between seasons. In winter it thins to a few sailings a week; in summer there is a night boat almost every day. I check the outbound sailing before I book anything else on the island, because everything else on Rhodes can be arranged after you arrive and the boat home cannot.
Rhodes town is compact enough that the old quarter, the harbour and the main street can be walked in an afternoon. What the island gives you that Athens does not is a wind: the meltemi blows through the summer and turns the north coast into a sailing corridor rather than a swimming one. That is how I left it. A berth on a boat going east to Marmaris, arranged by asking along the quay in the evening and being told to come back at seven in the morning, which is how most of the real transport on this route actually gets booked.
Money, time and the shape of the week
The week I would build looks like this, and it is deliberately front-loaded with the one crossing that has fixed dates. Everything after it is filler around a booked boat.
- Day one and two: Athens, on foot, with the Acropolis first thing on day two.
- Evening of day two: metro to Piraeus and the overnight boat to Crete.
- Days three and four: Heraklion for a morning, then the south coast for two nights.
- Day five: the crossing to Rhodes, arriving in the afternoon.
- Days six and seven: Rhodes town and the north coast, then the boat or the flight home.
Prices move by a factor of three between May and August on the ferries, and the timetables change with them, so the honest advice is to fix the two long crossings first and leave everything between them flexible. That is also the way this coast has always been travelled: the boat sets the date, and the island fills in the gap.
The one thing to book before you go
Book the outbound crossing from Piraeus, and nothing else in the first week. Once that ticket is in your hand the rest of the route has a spine, and every decision after it becomes a question of how many days are left between the boat you have and the boat you need.