Sorrento or Crete (Chania)?

You can't go wrong with either but i am biased--sorrento!

can you do both? fly in to rome or naples and out of athens and make your way in between by rail/car/bus and boat?

i was a travel agent for a very long time and i am sorry for the bad rep they have in poland!

Can't do both unfortunately :-( as we've decided to save money for other purposes. But we might end up doing one for a honeymoon and then leave the other one for a trip later on.

I think I'm leaning slightly more towards Sorrento at the moment (as it's easier to get around I think?), and we'd be able to do day trips to Pompeii, Capri etc.

We loved Sorrento & the amalfi coast! So beautiful. Unless you're really into history, skip Pompeii - it was a boring tour with surprisingly not much to look at. We rented a car and drove through the curvey coast line and it was so beautiful!!

I agree with ashlee about sorrento and the coast but not pompeii--it was facinating! to each his/her own

Thanks for your comment Ashlee - we've actually ended up choosing Sorrento after all (bought tickets this week as they were really cheap).

Hmm I was actually looking forward to seeing Pompeii as I've heard the ruins are quite interesting. But after your comment I'll definitely look into it more to make sure it's what we want. I highly doubt we'd go on an organised tour though - after backpacking in Spain/Italy for 3 months I've pretty much come to the conclusion that organised tours are generally a rip off and it's much better to research the place and plan your own day trips. The exception is those 'free' city tours where a student takes a group (usually people from hostels) around the interesting parts of the city and then asks for donations at the end. They actually have an incentive to make the tour really good as there's no guarantee they'll get paid.