Greek Island Hopping

snapjiggyfluff

So I'm just sitting at home for about the 20th day in a row without a job and I was wondering if anyone could give me advice about Greek island hopping?

I have no fixed time period or anything like that but I'd like to hear to any feedback from anyone who's done it before and can give any advice.

Now for some specifics, I was thinking of hopefully stretching this out for about a month,(maybe even more) spending a couple of days on each island and maybe an extended period of working in Crete or Ios.

I'll be able to rustle up about €1500 with flights already dealt with. It would be great if anyone could tell me

1. How long €1500 would last taking into account a bit of drinking(but mostly pre-drinking from a supermarket) and eating supermarket food.

2. How much transport between the islands costs?

3. Whether accomodation is much the same as hostels in western europe and if anyone could give me a rough guideline of the price?

4. And finally what the story is with bar and promotion work on the party islands. Will it be easy enough to get a job to tide myself over for a work if funds are getting low?

I know theres a lot of questions here but any help would be much appreciated!
Cheers!

Esse85

If you do a search, you'll find loads.

snapjiggyfluff

I've actually searched all the forums and theres nothing about it, seached both this forum and the general forum search, I wouldnt ask questions if the answers were a click of a mouse away

gnu

Hi,

You lucky thing!

Ive done it a couple of times and loved it. The last time was 2 years ago. I don't think I ever had anywhere near €1500 but I was never there longer than a few weeks. Aer Lingus were flying to Athens for ~€200 and I'd also picked up similarly priced non-direct flights with KLM or Malev in the past.

I've no idea about getting work - I've heard it doesn't hurt if you're a) female and b) gorgeous.

The most expensive ferry I took was €50ish from Crete to Athens (a long hop overnight). The shorter ones are a fair bit cheaper The cheapest I ever took was a few euro from Aegina to Angistri (about 30 minutes).

Hostels are cheap (10 - 15) but rooms are better and cheap too. I got really lovely ensuite rooms (for 2) for about €30 and there were cheaper going. I was generally only a couple of nights in each place and you could get a better rate for a week or more. There's no point getting somewhere "fancy" cos IMHO fancy doesn't really exist in Greece and you don't need it anyway. Anywhere I stayed was clean and simple and did the job just grand.

Now some of the islands are expensive relative to others e.g. Mykonos so bear that in mind.

Plan your journeys ahead as ferries to some islands are few and far between although some like Naxos get plenty.

Booze was cheap for me - local beer, retsina but if you want spirits/cocktails, Budweiser expect to pay a bit more. Food is really cheap too. When I went we spent about €50 - €60 a day for 2 but that was pushing the boat out and eating and drinking out for lunch and dinner and getting ice-creams etc.

Some handy websites:
http://www.greekislandhopping.com/
http://www.gtp.gr/RoutesForm.asp (ferry timetables - they change every week, are not published much in advance and get a fair bit less frequent in September)
http://www.greektravel.com/islands.htm (Matt Barrett has some great info and if you have any questions he'll generally get back to you. Nice guy.)

Have a great time if you go!

HTH

Edit: supermarket food was cheap - especially bread, fruit, water - all gorgeous and so cheap. I remember getting bread, cheese, tomatoes and a watermelon for a euro in one tiny village but it really does depend where you go. The more off the beaten track, the cheaper. Beer was about a euro for a large can at tourist prices I vaguely remember.