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Any recent Greek ferry booking advice??

Flying into Crete next June, then planning on using ferries to Santorini, Naxos, Athens (Piraeus) and on to Ancona, Italy. Did the Patras/Ancona trip several years ago with a tour no problem. Going solo this time and everything I find tells me to wait until May or so before booking. Any relevant advice will be appreciated.

Posted by
8126 posts

Going solo, I would just wait until you get there to handle any tickets. June is the start of the season, but not a huge burden on ferries. For the route you will be on, there are several ferries daily and I would either buy from an office the day before, or even a few hours before departure.

Posted by
8126 posts

Ferries.gr is a good site, and I have used it, but mainly for planning, not to purchase tickets. My advice is still to wait until you are there and buy the tickets the day before or day of travel. There are several reasons, but most center on Greece not always operating on schedule. Ferries cancel, weather changes, and most importantly the rest of your trip can change with conditions you encounter. Use Ferries.gr to get a list of companies and how often the do the routes you will be on. I am not sure that the schedules are accurate now for June (they actually only publish accurate schedules a few days before and may cancel at any time) but you want to get an idea on frequency and times. By this I mean that some islands are only served every couple of days, ferries may leave early in the day or late, and ferries run on strict routes, a string of islands that you would go one direction or the other. The islands you mention (Crete, Santorini, Naxos, Piraeus) are all on the same route with multiple daily connections.

Posted by
473 posts

We used ferries.gr several years ago and were extremely satisfied with their service. They even called my wife's cell phone due to a small mixup as to how we were going to obtain our tickets. We were very impressed by that. Having said that, Paul, as usual, gives some good advice. But if you really want to reserve ahead of time, which I can relate to, ferries.gr would be a good way to go.