Travel tips for Irish couples

More and more Irish couples are looking for a romantic and beautiful location for their wedding ceremony abroad. Greece has long been on that list, but, unfortunatley, because of poor flight schedules, alot of the greek islands are off-limits to the Irish.

However, I have learned over the last few years, with a little help and patience, the trip to Kefalonia can be actually quite easy and painless from Ireland.

During the summer months, there are numerous charter flights from most UK airports, most especially, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Stansted. The main tour operators offering these routes are Thomas Cook, Thomson, Olympic Holidays and BMI.

The biggest problem here is the connection from an Irish airport to a UK airport both coming and going. Aer Arann and Ryanair have very good flight times from the west and south of Ireland to most UK airports. What you need to do is check the timetable carefully from the UK and then allow yourself AT LEAST a three hour connection time. Very often this works one way, if it is a late flight out of England, but on the way back, it is usually too late to catch a connecting flight and may result in an overnight stay at the UK airport. Please keep in mind that you may be able to fly out of one airport and back into another

Another very easy and useful way to get here, is via Zakynthos, our neighbouring island. It is just a short one hour ferry ride from here or a 20 minute plane trip on Olympic Air, which only travels certain days. The ferry goes all summer long from early May til the end of October, and travels twice a day... once in the morning and once in the evening. It leaves the port of Skinari, (Agios Nikolas) on the north east coast of Zakynthos and docks in Pessada on Kefalonia, which is on the south coast. Foot passengers pay a very small fee, but with a car it costs about 40 Euros with the car and two passengers. A taxi from Zakynthos airport to Skinari is usually about 40 Euros and take about 50 minutes. Taxis are readily available outside the airport terminal or can be pre-booked through us. See the Zakynthos (Zante) - Kefalonia ferry timetablehere at the bottom of the page!

To get to Zakynthos - Falcon Holidays usually have flights from Dublin and Cork. Hopefully, the flight times coincide with the ferry times, but if not, there a plenty of apartments and hotels to stay for a night at very reasonably rates. We can also help you with that.

A third and slightly more complicated way to get here, is via Athens. During the months of May (late) til September (early), Aer Lingus has flights non-stop from Dublin to Athens... great prices if you book early!! It would require an overnight stay in Athens, since the flight arrives too late to get a connection. There are a couple of hotels at the airport or you could incorporate a short stay in Athens and get a nice hotel in the city for a night or two and take in the fabulous sights of Athens, including the Acropolis, which can be seen from most city centre hotels.

Another options are to fly from Heathrow to Athens with Aegean Airlines, Olympic Air or British Airways and EasyJet (from Luton and Gatwick).

For more help on getting to Kefalonia from Ireland, please go to our links page and check out the airlines' websites.

If I can help you in any other way, please contact me at TFlavin123@hotmail.com

Happy Planning!!