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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My vote is to do it yourself. Yes cruises are easy, but they also mean you only ever see the spots you’re visiting alongside hoards of others. By doing it yourself and staying on Santorini for 3 or 4 days you can avoid the worst of the crowds and really enjoy the island and its beauty. Some friends of ours recently did a Greek islands cruise and never even got off the ship there because the lines/wait to get up the cliffs were so unbelievably long. I found that sad.[/quote]

PP.  It is a bit sad.  But honestly, I would not recommend Santorini except on a cruise.  It has a dramatic ocean view from a peak and the architecture looks very picturesque.  But it doesn't have any food or cultural amenities you can't find elsewhere in other Greek tourist draws.  Being fixated on Santorini is like only having one place in the Hawaiian Islands that you'd be willing to go to.

It can be crowded even if you get up on the cliffs.  There just is a capacity constraint on the cable car to move people up.  I have heard they quit offering the donkey rides up that used to be popular.  My mom and sister did that and felt kind of meh about it.

I would research what you want to do in the ports to help make the decision.  A Rick Steves guidebook would be sufficient.

I went to Malta as a port call as a child.  It was okay.  I most remember being tendered in during a big wave period.  And going to a pretty generic cathedral.

[b]Ports/sights that were more interesting than I expected:

Venice (our cruise left from Venice)[/b]
Dubrovnik
Mykonos
Olympia/Delphi 
Corinth Canal
Sailing out of Piraeus
Naples to Pompeii (there are Italy/Greece cruises)

The Acropolis was as awesome as I expected.[/quote]

You didn't think Venice would be interesting? That's...interesting. [/quote]

PP.  I was a high school kid and I was fascinated by it.  You don't know what you'll like until you visit it.

Inexpensive guided walking tours were another travel revelation to me.

I spent a week in London in 1999 and went to as many Londonwalks tours as I could.  I had a blast.  I learned to like walking tours from a visit to downtown Atlanta.

https://www.walks.com/

Another recent outperform for me was Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge.  Most people who travel know what Stonehenge looks like.  A lot of people who visit feel very "meh" about it.  But my whole family liked it.

Back to the other point I made about calendars of days when certain sites have multiple cruise ships.  The Venetian locals certainly notice.   They are taking a lot of steps to reduce nuisance tourism and not letting the big ships dock near St. Marks anymore.

I was also in Bar Harbor once when the cruise boats were packing up and the tourists left so fast it was like the town got vacuumed.  You could see people streaming out of the business district down to the docks.

The reason Santorini gets bad is because you can't easily walk up the cliffs to get to the town.  It's like queueing for a high elevator to a skyscraper view.[/quote]

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