The ideal of island hopping around Greece is romantic and easy, and unfortunately the reality sometimes doesn’t meet your expectations. Flights are expensive and mainly revolve around Athens, and the ferries can be long and tiring and equally as expensive. However, there are a few things you can do to make it as easy as possible.

1. Plan your route accordingly. Look at a map of Greece and dictate where you want to go based off proximity to where you will be, to make it easier to find a straightforward route.
2. If you are queasy on the sea, prepare for seasickness. I found that the smaller speedboats were worse for this, and the bigger ships are much more stable. They may be a bit more expensive but if you’re scared of getting sick (like me!), then the bigger ships are much more comfortable. If you find yourself on a smaller boat, green apples and ginger beer are your best friends! Get some noise cancelling headphones so you can’t hear other passengers, and position yourself close to the bathrooms – this has always helped my anxiety. Most of all try put yourself to sleep so you can sleep through the trip seamlessly.
3. Take into account how long it takes to get from island to island. It took us roughly 15 hours to get from Rhodes to Santorini, and we chose to get a bedroom so we could get some sleep. Obviously this isn’t always financially available, and wouldn’t have been if my parents hadn’t take pity on us. We then had a 3 hour wait at a port in Santorini at 4am, followed by a couple more hours on a boat to Naxos. So some trips make for really long travel days, and often when planning a route people want to squeeze in as much as possible and don’t consider the actual time it takes to get between places.
4. Bring snacks!! And plenty of water to save you buying it or needing it on a boat.
5. Know the companies. There are multiple ferry companies across the Greek Islands, it can be overwhelming trying to compare times and prices. Ferryscanner is a great site to use that will give you all the options. The main companies we used are Blue Star Ferries, and SeaJets.
6. And finally, as always – plan in advance. The last thing you want to do is to be stuck on a port in the scorching heat unable to get a ferry. Plan in advance and have your tickets ready and accessible.