Inter-island timetables

It is a curious fact that in the first year of the 21st century it is still impossible to buy a full monthly ferry timetable to the Greek islands (hence the heavy emphasis on how to easily move around in the Greek Island Hopping 2002 guidebook). This seemingly bizarre state of affairs isn't that surprising given that most ferry journeys in Greece are made by islanders or their relatives travelling to and from Athens. All the locals are interested in are the times to these services - the timetables for other islands and inter-island ferries are irrelevant - unless, of course, you are an island hopping tourist.

Unfortunately, it is not possible for this site to provide inter-island ferry timetable information at the moment.

We are looking at ways of achieving this at some point in the future, but until the reliability of the various timetable sources improves, it isn't a viable option. Meantime, there are a number of database driven sites with ferry timetables of varying accuracy:
 
  Database Timetable Sites    

 

Greek Travel Pages (www.gtp.gr)

The main timetable site for Greek ferries, confusingly called 'Greek Island Hopping'. It somewhat let down by the need to input ports (using the GTP recognized spelling) and the inability of the database to give you a full outline of the hopping possibilities from a port on a given day.

A further problem is the lack of responsiveness to last minute changes - in short, the timetable is the 'official' one rather than the one actually operating! In times of stress - e.g. the weeks following the Express Samina sinking - access was shut down completely as the database couldn't keep abreast of all the changes. One final point of note: the site now has multiple addresses: e.g. 'www.gtpnet.com', 'www.gtpweb.com' and the current favourite: 'www.gtp.gr'. Link.

 

 

 
Paleologos (www.ferries.gr)

Paleologos Shipping & Travel Agency, a ticket agent running a rather scruffy agency on the main street of Iraklion, Crete, has cunningly set about putting both a timetable and shipping company web pages online. The weak point of the online timetable are its omissions: if this agent doesn't deal in the tickets for a company, its timetable isn't included. In practice this means that ferry companies that don't run international services or have connecting links with Crete tend to be absent, so the further north the ferry link is, the less likely it is to appear here. Link.

 

 

 
Port Authority site

A port authority site with an online database giving departures from Piraeus. At the moment the site is all in Greek (if you think you are up to reading Greek Capitals and want to try your luck, you will find the Piraeus departures listed via the fourth pull-down menu on the right - first menu item down).

Inactive buttons on this site indicate that it will one day have English pages and a list of Rafina departures as well. On the plus side, the timetables do appear to be kept up-to-date (the fact that you can't find out times beyond a week or two in advance suggests that it is being regularly revised). Link.

 

Kathimerini

This leading Athens daily has a Piraeus and Rafina timetable that is updated one (it is also published in an English supplement that appears in the local copies of International Herald Tribune). Worth checking out for last minute changes, it only covers a single day (weekends excepted) and, sadly, the updates are sometimes only made quite late in the day covered. Link.

 

 

© 2004 Frewin Poffley / Thingumajigolo Productions