The Saronic Islands
Cruise
 The One-Day Saronic Gulf
Cruise goes all year long and is a great
introduction to the islands of Aegina, Poros
and Hydra. This is one of the best day trips in Greece and is great in combination with a couple days on the islands. This is a great introduction to the Greek islands and includes lunch, and pick-up from various hotels in Athens and they take you back to the hotel after the cruise. At a cost of about 100 euros this is a wonderful way to spend the day.
All Day Cruises offers One-day Yacht and Sailboat Charters to the Saronic Gulf Islands which are like mini-cruises.
Yacht and Sailboat Charters
and Smaller Sail-Cruises of the Greek
Islands
For Yacht and Sailboat
Charters see www.greecetravel.com/sailing
where you will find information on chartering boats
with or without a skipper as well as cruises on sailing ships with
twenty or thirty cabins that go on weekly
itineraries to the islands, (like the cruise
ships but smaller). You don't have to book the
whole boat. You just book by the
person.
Santorini Sailing: Several companies do charters around the island catamarans which includes gourmet meals, swimming in isolated coves, and a spectacular view of the island. You can take half-day, full day and overnight trips.
For those who are visiting Mykonos try the 1 Day Yachting Cruise from Mykonos to Rinia & Delos offered by Fantasy Travel. Rinia is a small island accessable only by sailboat or motoryacht.
Tours from Cruise
Ships
 Many cruise
companies discourage the use of taxi and limo companies
for private tours in destinations like Rhodes,
Athens, Crete, Santorini and places in
Turkey. Whether this is to 'protect' the
passenger or because the cruise ships
themselves offer tours I don't know (actually I do know and you can probably figure out why I can't tell you). I do know
that you can get excellent service from taxi
companies which offer personalized
tours, many of whom charge by the trip
and not by the person. These tours are like
having a local host show you around the
islands, towns and cities that they know.
Instead of eating in some giant tourist trap
that accommodates the dozens of people
who take the bus tours, you can go to small
tavernas where the locals eat, on quietstreets or on the sea.
These are some drivers I recommend:
In Athens
of course there is
George the Famous
Taxi Driver who is now something of an
international hero for his tours of Athens,
the mainland and his ability to get customers
from the boats to the airport or hotels
comfortably and quickly. George, like the
other drivers listed here is non-smoking,
English-speaking, knowlegable and drives a
very comfortable air-conditioned
Mercedes.
For groups of more than 4 there is his son Dennis, in the photo above, with his beautiful luxury Mercedes limo that seats 7 plus the driver. For even larger groups there is son Billy with their Mercedes Bus able to seat 12 people. You can e-mail them at georgetaxitours@yahoo.com
On the island of
Rhodes Nick Axarlis and his brother
Mike, two Greeks from Alexandria, speak
6 languages (English, Greek, Arabic,
French, Italian, Spanish and German) and
showed me places on the island that I
would never have found on my own. Their
company is called
Private
Tours and they do tours and transfers.
Both are friendly, smart and funny and they
have great taste in food. I spent much of my
time with them and am ready to go back
again.
On the island of
Crete there is
Lefteris
Nikoforakis, who I spent a wonderful time with in Heraklion and is
recommended by George the Famous Taxi Driver. Lefteris packs a lot into a day in his tours of Crete. Obviously as with
the other drivers you can see a lot more when
you don't have a large group slowing you
down.
There are others private tour driver/guides in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Egypt and around the Mediterranean listed in Mediterranean Cruises: Private Tours
For a guide who can show you the archaeological sites and museums you need an officially licensed tour guide. They are university educated and are like walking encyclopedias and well worth the money. See my Licensed Guides in Greece Page
If you are on one of the giant cruise ships and wondering why a town you have never heard of called Katakolon is on your itinerary along with all those famous places read my Katakolon Page. But to make it easy for you, the reason you are stopping there is because it is the closest port to Ancient Olympia.
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If you are
coming to Greece this year and you want to see
as much as you can, what better way to see the
Greek Islands and the coast of Turkey then to
go in style on a cruise ship? But there are some things you should think about. For example do you want to spend all your time on a ship and 5 or 6 hours on an island, or do you want to spend more time on the islands? If you are using a cruise ship as a sort of introduction to Greece for a future trip where you will spend more time on an island or two then I get it. Think of it as getting the appetiser sampler instead of a main meal, so next time you come you will know what you like. If there is a next time.
Of course if this is your one and only trip to Greece it would be great if you could do both. Well, actually there is. 
Personally I feel like if you are going to Greece and you want to do a cruise, you want one that begins and ends in Athens, and includes Mykonos, Santorini, Rhodes, Crete, Patmos and at least one stop in Turkey.The 
Several winters ago I attended the NY Times Travel show and had a conversation with a cruise agent who was complaining about the giant cruise companies jumping into the Greek market. "These ships are on a scale that is totally inappropriate to the Greek islands. They dwarf them. Can you imagine that they are building a cruise ship
that will be as big as the empire state building and plan to use it in the Aegean? This is sheer greed. And what will happen
to these islands
when thousands of people converge on them at once? And the reason they have chosen to extend their seasons from winters in the Caribbean to summers in the Greek islands? They need the money. If it were otherwise they would have built ships that were suited to the Aegean Sea with its small harbors and quaint towns. Smaller ships."
For this reason I recommend the Greek Cruise companies. There are those who will complain because the smaller ships don't live up to their idea of what a cruise should be: life on a floating mall where your every desire is pampered to, even desires you didn't know you had. But the Greek cruise
companies know the territory, the boats are not small but not so big that getting on and off them is a problem. You may not be able to hit golf balls off the upper
deck into the beautiful blue Aegean but there is plenty to do on board and the Greek ships do most of their traveling while you are asleep. The Greek ships generally carry around 800 passengers compared to the big cruise ships which carry several thousand. If your purpose is to sit back like a pasha and use the Greek islands as a background for all the exciting activities offered on the ship then maybe the big international cruise lines are
for you. But if your purpose is to see as many Greek islands, and as much of Turkey and Athens as you can in a short period of time then the Greek cruises are the way to go.
If this is your once in a lifetime trip to Greece and the cruise does not include Santorini and Rhodes, find another cruise company. 
In my opinion this is a great way to go. Yes it is a cruise except there are only from 5 to 25 cabins meaning there are only 10 to 40 people on your boat instead of hundreds or thousands. They are mostly old style wooden sailboats though they mostly travel using the engines. And unlike a cruise where you wait in line
to get on and off the ships and sometimes have to use smaller boats to get to shore because they are too big for the harbor, these boats pull up to the dock and you get on and off as you like. They also stop in quiet coves and beaches for swimming, fishing and lunch. The famous Captain Alexander Matsakis does cruises of the Cyclades, Sporades and the Ionian Islands and is something of a legend. Besides his weekly scheduled cruises his boats can be chartered as well. 
Special
offers by Dolphin Hellas:
There is a new bus that leaves from Akti Xaveriou which is the main road that is in front of the cruise terminal. The X80 connects Pireaus with the Acropolis and Syntagma Square and it is an express route which means it should get you there and back pretty quickly. It includes stops at some of the most important sites including
The Acropolis Museum (a short walk to the Acropolis), the Archaeological Museum of Pireaus, the Planetarium and the National Museum of Contemporary Art. It ends in Syntagma Square and takes about 30 minutes to get there from the cruise terminal. (The Hop-on Bus Tour of Athens also comes to the cruise terminal. Just look for the sign.)
If you want to go to the Olympic Stadium and the Temple of Olympian Zeus you don't go left on Vironos, and instead continue on Dionysiou Areopagitou til you get to the big street which is Amalias Avenue and you will cross over and walk to your left to Hadrian's Arch and walk past it to Vassilissis Olgas Street which
will take you past the entrance to the temple and all the way tothe marble Olympic Stadium. You can go back past the Zappion building or follow
the signs through
the National Gardens and that will bring you back to Amalias Avenue. You can either cross and follow the tourists who know where they are going into the Plaka, or you can go left and see the Parliament Building and Syntagma Square and the evzones (if there is not a demonstration going on), and from there walk down Ermou, the pedestrian shopping street which will take you right to Monastiraki Square where you can take the metro back to Pireaus after you wander around and check out the shops and the cafes
and restaurants which border the ancient Agora. By the way your ticket to the Acropolis is good for all this stuff.
