Greek Ferries: Always Late

The thing about the Greek ferries is, if you appreciate promptness, it’s not for you. Every single ferry I took in Greece either arrived late or dropped me off late–most of them were late in both ways. It was incredibly frustrating when a ferry was an hour and a half late.

The thing about the Greek ferries is, if you appreciate promptness, it’s not for you. Every single ferry I took in Greece either arrived late or dropped me off late–most of them were late in both ways. It was incredibly frustrating when a ferry was an hour and a half late.
I highly recommend taking Drammine or another motion sickness medicine, especially on the fast ferries, as you don’t want to be ill…and it’s easy to get ill if you don’t. Drammamine has the added bonus of putting you to sleep, which is another way to get through the long ferry rides.
Most of the times, you can just arrive a bit before your ferry and buy a ticket. During the high season (summer), it is recommended to get them as early as you can…they book out quite easily, especially ferries that leave from Piraeus or Rafina (Athen’s closest ports) on Friday or ferries that go there on Sunday. I speak from experience.
My boyfriend and I were not sure what time we wanted to leave Mykonos to return to Athens, so we did not book until the day before. (Purchasing ferry tickets also required a 20 minute bus ride to Mykonos town, so that made us take a tad longer as well.) We were shocked when we learned out ferry was completely booked…and every single other ferry to Athens for the next day, except for the one that left at 1 in the morning, and arrived in Athens at 5 or 6 am. We had a room booked in Athens that would charge our credit card regardless if we showed up or not…and we wanted to spend time in Athens, eating at our favorite Athenian restaurant (Byzantio), wandering around the Plaka, checking out a Greek club…Frantic, we ran down the street, inquiring at other travel agencies, getting nervous. We checked about flights (only 25 minutes, but 98 euros!), and decided, let’s do it. They were all booked. Finally, one travel agent mentioned Rafina. Rafina is a 1 hour bus ride from Athens. There were two seats left on the entire day–so we took the 4pm ferry from Mykonos to Rafina. They obviously overbooked the ferry–the lawn chairs keyed us in, and the ride was over an hour later than what they promised. Miserable, I succeeded in annoying Trevor and becoming quite cranky. We took the bus outside the ferry to Athens, and it dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. Panicked, we asked some police officers who told us a 10 minute walk would bring us to the metro where we could take it two stops, then walk another 10 minutes. Our bags felt heavy and we were hungry, dirty, and cranky. We hopped a cab for 2,30 euro (the metro would’ve been 1 euro each) and felt quite pleased.