Greek Island Hopping

The author of this book may have spent one two many seasons watching crowds overtake the Greek isles. The information in this book is useful and accurate but don't be put off by the heavy handed editorializing.

We visited the Greek islands for 10 weeks in June, July, and August. This book was hands down the best of the Greek Island books that we purchased (we also bought Lonely Planet and Frommers). We wanted to get out to some of the less visited islands, and this was the only book we found that included good details of places like Folegandros, Amorgos, Sikinos, and Serifos. The book does not focus heavily on restaurants and accommodations as many other travel guides do. Instead, it focuses more on information about the islands and their history. We prefer that because we use trip advisor and other sites for our hotel and restaurant suggestions. We also found the information to be more accurate in this book and more up to date than in the other books we used. The author uses a dry humor when describing some destinations, and that makes it a bit more interesting than just reading a bunch of facts. We also liked the side notes about historical information and other bits of interest about the various islands. The books provides extensive information on the ferry system and connections. This is something that is hardly touched upon in other guides. However, we did not end using the ferry information in the book as much as we expected. It was helpful in getting a general sense of how certain connections work etc., but the schedules and variou island connections change so much each season that you are better off getting to Greece and then getting an up to date schedule. I wish the book contained more information on helpful Greek phrases and Greek words. None of the books we purchased had more than 2 or 3 pages on the topic of the Greek language. In a book of several hundred pages it would be helpful to have about 10 pages devoted to common vocabulary words, phrases, numbers etc. to help with communication when in the more remote islands.

Greek Island Hopping is a must-have volume for travelers to the Greek isles: the maps, island descriptions, ferry information, etc. go above and beyond its competitors. I just got back from 2+ weeks in the islands & Athens and used this as my primary companion guide during that time. Sometimes it can come off a bit as too backpacker or party-seeker oriented, but this impression can be deceptive because the guide is nicely balanced with a good deal of information on the history, mythology, and culture of the land as well. It has a wealth of helpful information on Athens, a wise inclusion given that most travelers to the islands will likely throw a few days in Athens into their itineraries as well. That said, this guide has two significant limitations ... one which manifests itself before you leave for the islands, the other is a problem once you get there. That would be SLEEPING and EATING concerns, respectively. Personally, the lack of hotel information is less of a problem given the wealth of information on the internet from reputable sites these days, but the complete lack of dining information was a large drawback for me. It made the Lonely Planet guide to the islands--which is otherwise inferior to Island Hopping in just about every way--a similarly indispensable resource for that narrow purpose. In the islands, it's very easy to pay a lot for bad food, so having some idea of what places to seek out and which to avoid would be very helpful because the good, the bad, and the ugly are often all located on the same street. It really shouldn't be that hard to list a couple of places for each town or island. Despite these fairly major drawbacks, I still give this guide 5 stars because the wealth of maps, information, and helpful guidance makes this guide a must-have companion in spite of its warts. I imagine the writers want to avoid making the guide too long, but they really do need to consider adding some eating & sleeping information to compete with the "big names" like Lonely Planet and Frommers.

This is a tremendously useful book. It's even the book we dragged around the sites in Athens with us, while the ones with lovely pictures, specifically for Athens, stayed back in our hotel room.

This book was the perfect companion for our cruise of the Mediterranean. It had a map of all the major towns of each greek island (I looked at almost every other guide for the Greek Islands and this was the only one that had that). We wanted to explore the islands on our own instead of taking a shore excursion so this was exactly what we were looking for. The maps were detailed enough that we could get around without any problems. It also included Athens which was a huge bonus. It had sections on history and the main sights of each place. Two possible downsides to the book. 1. The information on lodging was pretty skimpy and the book is definitely geared more towards backpackers (it has information on camp sites which might be useful if you are a backpacker). 2. There really is no section on food so if you depend on your guidebooks to point you in the right direction for this, you're out of luck. If I was doing my own tour of the Greek Islands, this book would have gotten a 3 or 4 star rating given what it lacked in lodging and food. I would have had to buy another book like Frommer's or Fodor's for the information it was missing. For a cruise, this was exactly what I was looking for.