What You Need To Know About Ferry Travel In Greece

There are over 6000 Greek islands, but only 227 are inhabited. To narrow down which ones to visit, I bought a guide book, searched blogs and also talked to people I knew who had made the trip there to get their recommendations. We looked into flight options as well as ferries, but decided to book the ferry as it’s significantly less expensive. The trade off, however, is that it’s also a significantly longer travel time. Here’s what you need to know about ferry travel in Greece.

The best place to start for ferry travel in Greece is the website or smart phone app, Ferryhopper. This allows you to choose what port is closest to you, and what island you’d like to sail to. It shows you all the route options available as well as departure times, duration of the trip, and cost of tickets, which vary ship to ship. There are three ports from Athens where you can board a ferry to one of the numerous islands. There are also multiple companies that operate ferries and different styles of boats. You can pay more for a faster boat, for example.

Each boat has a few different cafe or cafeteria style options for food and drinks. The washrooms on all of the boats we were on were clean and spacious. You can walk around inside the ferry (some even have a souvenir store and ice cream shop), access the decks to get some air, or enjoy the beautiful views. All in all, we found the three different ferries to be pretty good overall. This was probably the roughest one for us. Thankfully it was also the shortest!

Different Types Of Tickets

There are several options for the type of ticket you can buy for ferry travel in Greece. These options also vary per ferry. There’s a deck seat, a numbered seat (silver class), a business seat (club class) or a VIP seat (platinum). Some ferries also offer cabins, but not all of them. You can walk on with luggage or drive on. Pets are allowed, but this will restrict the type of ticket you can purchase to certain areas of the ferry.

A deck seat is exactly what it sounds like: you’re able to sit anywhere on any of the decks outside. This does include covered areas outside, and also a canteen on some ferries on the deck. This ticket also allows you to sit inside at the public lounge (any seat that isn’t numbered) if you can find space. The only issue is if you’re lucky enough to find a seat, it likely won’t be there should you need to get up for any reason.

A numbered seat is exactly that: a seat you are assigned by number and it’s yours for the duration of the trip. They are a fairly good size and comfortable, with tray tables and a tv in some areas.

A business class or VIP seat is the same, but has it’s own section that’s quieter and has more space for guests. As the boat filled up and became quite loud, I could see the appeal of this ticket if you have the means for the price tag.

When reading the descriptions of the different seat options, we didn’t fully understand what they meant, but we quickly figured it out once we boarded. There are quite a few lounge areas that you can camp out at, but they definitely filled up quickly, and some areas were tightly packed from people moving chairs and tables around to accommodate their group. The deck is also quite spacious with lots of seating or standing/ walking room. There are options to be out of the sun or wind.

We arrived early so there was no crowd trying to get on and we could easily check out the ferry. You walk right on to the boat from the pier and place your suitcase on large luggage racks where cars will also park. Some boats will have you stack your luggage pallet style upon boarding. This made it more difficult when disembarking if your luggage was on the bottom of the pile like ours was.

We stopped in the lounge first since it was early, and we hadn’t yet had breakfast. They had a good range of food – fruit cups, yogurt and, of course, a selection of pastries. There were a few people around but it wasn’t packed with people at this point. The lounge area is kind of like a cross between an airport terminal and a food court. If you’re going to go with deck/lounge ticket, I highly recommend going early.

I should also point out that we were travelling on the Thursday before Good Friday, and the holiday Orthodox Easter weekend. There were a LOT of people travelling, but the number of people dwindled down after each stop, the further we got from Athens. It was actually shocking how fast the lounge filled up as we sat having our coffee. Throngs of people poured in and staked out what would be their space for the journey.

Because our first ferry trip was going to be 6 hours long, we opted to get a numbered seat so that we were able to get up and move around without fear of losing our seats. We were also in a slightly quieter area which was nice for reading.

Prebooking Tickets vs. Walking On

We were told by past visitors that you didn’t need to prebook ferry tickets. Just walk down to the ferry terminal on the day of and buy passage. I’m sure if we hadn’t gone for the Easter Weekend, this might have been an option for us. We did not do this, and here’s why.

A month before leaving for Greece, I got the ferryhopper app and started looking at the sailing times so we could plan out when we’d arrive and depart. At that time, there were multiple routes available. We made a loose plan but didn’t buy tickets. A couple of weeks before our trip, I noticed a lot of the tickets had sold out (long weekend), and the prices were going up. So we bit the bullet and booked the ferries we needed. This also resulted in us having to shuffle some accommodations as we couldn’t travel on the dates or times we had initially planned for.

While it’s not necessary to book your ferry tickets months in advance, it would help to look at the sailing times and routes when you are initially making travel plans if you are looking to stick to a specific timeline.

What I Wish I Knew Before Ferry Travel in Greece

While it’s a gamble, if it’s a short ferry, I would buy the less expensive ticket and take my chances on the unoccupied numbered seats. We watched lots of people do this, and only a few ended up having to move as the rightful owner of a seat showed up. Staff didn’t check that you are sitting in the right seat on SOME boats, but on others, you could not even access the section unless your ticket showed you were in the right area. For a longer ferry ride, it’s definitely better to know you have a comfortable seat.

Another helpful hint, at least during our travels, is that the ferries don’t seem to run on time. Even if you’re taking the first one of the day. Thankfully (or by necessity), the ferryhopper app offers a live map where you can track your ferry. It also tells you how many minutes behind it’s running. This can save you from waiting at the actual terminal when you could be enjoying whatever town you’re in a little longer. **Check out aloSim for very affordable eSim international data options which help with tracking your ferry on the fly. Use code ALICIA at checkout for 10% off your first esim!

All in all, we didn’t mind travelling by ferry. It was part of the Greek experience! The extra time a flight would have given us would’ve been nice. In the end, saving money was more important. The bonus of travelling for 6 hours by ferry was that I got to see so many more islands, and get beautiful photos from the deck. Be sure to get out and look around at the stops – it’s worth it!