James Williamson & Alexandra Lumb's Wedding Website

Overview

Our wedding is in the town of Elounda on the island of Crete in Greece.

The close large international airport for Greece is Athens (ATH).

Once in Athens, you may poke around or finish your journey with a quick hop to the island of Crete. The airport is in the capital city of Heraklion (HER).

The airport in Heraklion is about an hour drive (41 miles) from Elounda. The coastal town of Elounda on the eastern edge of Crete has wonderful food and great options for lodging. There are many options for all levels of budgets from the hotels in the town (which is about an 8 minute walk to the Villa/venue) to the Airbnb options surrounding to the adjacent villa rentals.

Flight Tips Two Ways:

If you are new or unfamiliar with international travel or the deep ins and outs of flights, this will give you some quick tips, if you are seasoned, skip to the section labeled for you.

- Most of our travelers are coming from Dallas or Nashville. The airports abbreviated for these cities are DFW and BNA, respectively. The main arrival or connection airports (which may or may not apply to you) are: IAH (Houston), ORD (Chicago), ATL (Atlanta), JFK (New York), LHR (London), IST (Istanbul), ATH (Athens) and HER (Heraklion).

- All travelers need a passport. Start this process early, it is easy and lasts 10 years. If you already have passport, it needs to be valid for at least 90 days beyond your travel date. To be safe, if your passport expires before August of 2024, get it renewed before you travel. Greek Customs will deny your entry.

- There are no vaccination requirements for entry to Greece.

- There are two ways to book your trip, either all at once with one airline (or third party place like booking.com or expedia.com) or you can split it manually.

Let’s break down what those options look like for a traveler from Nashville.

You can go directly to an airline (a real one so don’t do Southwest) like American Airlines and enter your Departure city as “BNA” and your arrival as “HER”. You may see flights that take 36 hours. This is because you get to play around in London for 20 hours. You can absolutely book this but it is not the fast or easy flight.

The other option is splitting your itinerary. With this option, you would visit the airline directly or a third party website like the above and enter “BNA” as departure and “ATH” as arrival. This will give you the easiest, most direct route. Based on your arrival time in ATH, you can visit Google Flights or similar and type in “ATH” as your departure and “HER” as your arrival. Choose a flight that departs about 1.5-2 hours from your scheduled arrival in ATH. This portion of the trip (sometimes called a “leg”) is booked separately from your main ticket and is typically cheaper this way.

- Getting down to the booking and the airlines. Ryanair is the Spirit airlines of Europe. If you have bags (carry on and personal item) like in the US, these will be more expensive than almost every other flight by the time you add them in. I don’t believe there is any direct from DFW or BNA that will take you straight to Athens which means you’re stopping in London or another European country.

Airlines have their US versions and then have international partners. For example, American Airlines is British Airways when you leave the US. United may use Lufthansa or Turkish Airlines outside of the US. Delta may use Air France, KLM or Virgin Atlantic.

American Airlines and Virgin have great planes from Dallas and Nashville, respectively. Total flight time from either place to Athens should be about 14-16 hours including layovers.

If you are in Dallas, Turkish Airlines is an option. It will fly to Istanbul first and then to Athens but the flight time is about the same as American Airlines.

I know the airline info can get a little overwhelming so breaking down why you may care.

Turkish Airlines -

Pros: Better accommodations in the air for economy passengers, the food is better, the blankets are amazing, really nice planes/entertainment and is typically very cheap.

Cons: Istanbul is your international connection and the airport can be confusing, customer service is hard to reach since they are based in Turkey.

American Airlines/British Airways -

Pros: US based customer service,

For the seasoned travelers, American or Turkish are great from DFW; Delta/Virgin for BNA travelers.

Aegean is the best for the ATH-HER leg.

ATH has a couple Priority Pass lounges are decent if you want to do all the flying in one go.

The villa/venue is an hour car ride from the airport. Airport transfers are around $40 one way. Rental cars are reasonably priced if you want to explore the beautiful island while you are here. The villa has enough parking for about 25 vehicles.

Since a lot of people are going to be arriving around the same time most likely, it may be worth carpooling or splitting rental cars. If you are interested in this, we will send an email out closer to the date and connect the people interested in splitting rentals.