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Books Related to Greek Island Hopping Thomas Cook - ISBN: 1841578398
An indispensable guide to the Grrek Islands - Rated
Greek Island Hopping is the only fully comprehensive guide to the Greek islands complete with useful maps of every town on every island. The author is opinionated but his views fitted my own experience. There are indicative timetables for ferries which proved to be inaccurate due to the Greek habit of changing things at the drop of a hat. However this shortcomong is pointed out in the text which also includes lots of useful travel hints not found in other guides. There is limited information on eating and drinking except for symbols on town plans but these proved to be the best restaurants/tavernas. To get the best out of this guide you need to understand the maps which include hotel, beach, bus and local boat information. On my trip I also took the Rough Guide to the Greek Islands but preferred Greek Island Hopping
Miserable odyssey - Rated
This book should be called 'Why I hate Greece by Frewin Poffley'. It is a relentlessly negative travel guide that makes islands of the gods sound like an archipelago of inconveniences, irritation and despair. Whoever Frewin Poffley is, he/she has a chip on his/her shoulder as large as the akropolis and clearly found researching the book a sisyphian task of unremitting woe. Every time you get excited about about moving from one island to the next, Frewin manages to depict a vision of dystopia awaiting your next move that will make you wish for Poseidon's wrath to capsize your puny bark and pull you into the swirling Aegean. I can only imagine the ludicrously upbeat cartoon pictures that litter this book were forcibly inserted by the publishers to disguise the murky vision of Hades evinced by the prose.
Frewin also seems to be as lame as Hephaestus, with walking times wildly off mark for anyone accustomed to trekking more that 6 paces without stopping for a pistachio ice cream and a shot of raki. This is deeply frustrating as you end up hailing taxis for journeys that turn out to be a 10 minute stroll. There is also precious little on restaurants/drinking holes - which, as eating and drinking are pretty much the main activities in the Greek islands, is a major ommission.
The only strong points are the sections on ruins, which are generally quite comprehensive, and the strange hysterical compulsion you develop to read what joyless trials await you on your next island stop.
I can only imagine that Frewin's credentials for writing the book come from a 10 year journey of struggle and privation to rival that of Odysseus. As such, it is an interesting and epic account of one man/woman's descent into misery. However, if you want a helpful travel guide that won't make you want to join Eurydice in the underworld I'd steer clear of this.
