Almost everyone searching Santorini escorts is mid-itinerary rather than resident, and the itinerary nearly always passes through Athens. Two things are worth saying immediately. We do not operate on Santorini or on any island other than Mykonos, and the Athens stopover that bookends most Cycladic trips is longer and more useful than travellers expect.
The crossing, honestly timed
Piraeus to Santorini is 5 hours on a high-speed vessel and 8 or more on a conventional ferry, which is a genuinely long day either way. The high-speed boats are the ones that get cancelled when the meltemi blows hard, and in July and August that wind can hold for three or four days at a stretch, so a tight connection back to a flight is the single most common way a Greek island trip goes wrong.
Flying is 45 minutes and costs you the two airport transfers instead. In peak season the flights fill months ahead.
Piraeus itself is 25 to 40 minutes from central Athens depending on traffic, and the port is enormous. Gate numbers are not intuitive and they change; allow an hour before departure rather than the 30 minutes you would allow anywhere else.
The stopover is longer than you think
Because of those timings, most Santorini trips contain at least one real Athens night at one end and often two. People plan the islands in detail and treat the capital as an airport with monuments attached, which is the wrong way round for anyone who likes cities.
An Athens evening runs late. Dinner from 9.30pm, bars filling after midnight, and the pedestrian street under the Acropolis busy until well past one. If you have landed at 8pm and think you have missed the day, you have not; the day has not started.
Where we work
Athens and Mykonos. There is no office in Fira, no arrangement in Oia, and nobody on Santorini works with us or on our behalf. Anyone who says otherwise while you are standing on the caldera is unconnected to this agency, and that is worth knowing before rather than after.
What can be arranged is the Athens leg, and the cleanest way to do it is from wherever you are now, days ahead, rather than in the hour after a ferry docks. See Athens. If the trip continues to the one island we do work on, see Mykonos.
Choosing where to stay for a stopover
- Syngrou corridor: the big hotels, 15 minutes to the centre and 15 to the coast, and the easiest addresses to find.
- Historic centre: Syntagma, Kolonaki, Plaka. Everything on foot, nothing parks.
- Piraeus: sensible only if your ferry leaves before 8am. It empties early and has little else.
- Airport corridor at Spata: for a dawn flight and nothing else. It is 35km from anything worth seeing.
What is fixed
The fee covers an agreed block of time and the travel to reach you, is settled at the start, and does not change afterwards. Everyone is an adult professional working on her own terms. Boundaries are stated when the booking is made and are not reopened later in the evening, and nothing that was left unsaid beforehand is assumed afterwards.
One practical note that applies to the whole Cyclades: if a sailing is cancelled, say so early. A booking with an honest timeframe can usually be moved. Silence is the only thing that cannot be worked with.
ποιες κοπελες εχετε διαθεσιμες στη Σαντορινη;
εχετε καποια κοπελα στη σαντορινη;