Short answer. For almost every sailing from Piraeus, stay in central Athens rather than at the port. The blue metro line runs from the centre to Piraeus with no changes, and a taxi takes about 25 minutes and costs around €20. The line opens at about 05:30, so for anything sailing before roughly 07:00 you want a taxi booked rather than a train. Two sailings are worth moving out of town for: a Rafina ferry before about 07:00, and anything from Lavrio, which is closer to the airport than to the city. Before planning anything else, check your ticket for your port, because the island does not decide it, and for your gate, because the gates at Piraeus are up to 40 minutes' walk apart.
We are Galinos Giaglis and Sissi Filippidou. We have lived in Kolonaki for more than ten years and host two apartments here, five minutes from Evangelismos on the blue line. Guests ask us some version of this most weeks, usually the evening before, usually with the gate number sitting unread in an email. Some of the answers below send you somewhere other than us.
Last verified: July 2026. Ferry gates and Attica timetables change more often than travel articles get updated. Every figure below links to the operator so you can check it against your own date.
Start here: find your departure
- Piraeus, morning sailing to the Cyclades or Crete → central Athens. This is most people. See Piraeus.
- Piraeus, sailing before 07:00 → central Athens, with a taxi booked the night before rather than the first train. See getting to Piraeus.
- Piraeus, afternoon boat to Rhodes, Crete, Lesvos or Chios → central Athens, and the day is yours. See the overnight boats.
- Rafina, sailing before 07:00 → stay in Rafina. See Rafina.
- Rafina, sailing after 08:00 → central Athens, with a transfer booked. See Rafina.
- Lavrio, any sailing → stay near the airport. See Lavrio.
- Flying out of Athens airport → work back from the time you need to be at the terminal. See flying out early.
Mykonos sails from both Piraeus and Rafina, and Milos and Sifnos from both Piraeus and Lavrio. The island you are going to does not tell you which port you leave from, and plenty of people find that out too late. Your ticket does.
Piraeus: the part that catches people out
Piraeus handles most island traffic: Santorini, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros, Crete, the Dodecanese, the Saronic islands and the cruise terminals. The journey out from Athens is usually straightforward. What catches people is the port itself, and specifically the distance between the gates.
Know your gate before you plan your morning
Piraeus from the air. The berths run the whole length of the waterfront, which is why your gate matters more than your sailing time. Photo: Cristo Vlahos / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0
The metro station sits between gates E5 and E6. From there:
- Gates E5 to E7 are about a 5 minute walk, and take the conventional Cycladic ferries.
- Gates E8 to E10 are more like 10 to 15 minutes on foot. The high-speed catamarans to the Cyclades often go from E9 and E10, and the Saronic boats to Aegina and Hydra from E8, so a lot of people who assume they are in the five-minute group are not.
- Gates E1 and E2 are the far ones, up to about a 40 minute walk at the end of the port.
- A free shuttle runs from inside gate E7, opposite the metro, out to gates E1, E2 and E3 roughly every 20 minutes when there are departures.
E1 and E2 are where our guests go for the long boats: Rhodes and the rest of the Dodecanese, Crete, Lesvos and Chios. Those sail in the afternoon or evening rather than at dawn, so it is not a pre-breakfast emergency. It is worse than that. You are doing that walk in the middle of an August afternoon, along the water with no shade, dragging a week's luggage. Nobody enjoys it and we would not send you to do it on foot.
So "stay near the port" is a less useful instruction than it sounds, when the far gate is forty minutes from the near one. Take a taxi to the gate itself. The metro leaves you at E5 and the rest is yours to solve.
The gate on your ticket is not always the door you walk through
Gates are assigned by vessel, operator and date rather than by destination, and they move, so we have deliberately not published a list of which island leaves from where. Two sailings to the same island on the same day can go from different gates.
There is a second thing nobody warns you about, and it is the one that unsettles people. The gate number on your ticket is not always the entrance you can get in by. Your ticket says E9 and the way in that morning is through E8. Gates get closed off for works, for a cruise call, for reasons nobody explains at the barrier. You are not lost and you have not misread it; you walk along until you find the one that is open.
Which is why the honest advice for Piraeus is patience and buffer time. Not a system, not a shortcut. Turn up early enough that walking an extra few hundred metres is an inconvenience rather than a disaster.
- Read the gate on your ticket or in the operator's confirmation email.
- Check it against the Piraeus Port Authority departures board the evening before.
- If it is E1, E2 or E3, take a taxi to the gate and add half an hour to everything below.
- When you get there, follow the signs and the crowd rather than the number in your hand.
Getting to Piraeus from central Athens
Evangelismos, our station, on the blue line. The same line reaches Piraeus and the airport without a change. Photo: Argybz / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0
The blue metro line (line 3). From the centre to Piraeus with no changes, about 20 minutes from Syntagma and 25 from Evangelismos, for €1.20. The same line runs out to the airport, so a base on it sits on the direct route between the two (STASY, the operator). The line opens at about 05:30 and runs to 23:59, or 01:06 on Friday and Saturday nights, which is the number that matters if you are coming back off a late ferry. For a sailing before about 07:00 the first train is cutting it too fine, so book a car.
Evangelismos, Syntagma and Monastiraki are on that line. Plaka, Koukaki and Makrygianni are not, and will cost you a change with your luggage on the one morning you least want it. For a sightseeing trip we would send you to Plaka or Koukaki without hesitating.
At the ticket machine, note that the airport is a separate €9 fare, not the €1.20 one. Ride out there on a standard ticket and the exit gates stay shut, and the penalty is about €36.
A pre-booked private transfer. At that hour this is the least work. The driver takes you to the gate itself rather than to the metro, and the price is agreed before you get in, which matters most for an E1 or E2 sailing, a pre-dawn start, or four people with a week's luggage. If you are staying with us, send us your sailing time and gate and we will book the car and tell you when to come down.
A taxi app. In Greece, Uber, Bolt and FreeNow all dispatch licensed taxis on the regulated meter. UberX private cars do not operate here, so there is no surge pricing and little to choose between the apps on price. FreeNow has the largest network and is usually quickest in the centre. Central Athens to Piraeus is around €20 on the meter, about 25 minutes at that hour, plus a small platform fee, and more again if you pre-book rather than hail on the spot. A private transfer arranged in advance is nearer €30 to €35. Availability is the real catch: at 05:30 in August a car will not necessarily appear because you opened an app, so for anything before 07:00 book ahead.
A worked example: the 07:25 sailing from gate E6
Boarding closes about half an hour before departure, so 06:55 is the deadline, not 07:25. Against that deadline the metro and a taxi are not the same journey.
By metro, leave at 05:55. Trains run every 7 to 9 minutes at that hour rather than every three, so the wait is part of the journey rather than a rounding error: a few minutes down to the platform, up to 9 standing there, about 24 on the train, 5 more on foot at the far end. That is 40 minutes door to gate. Leave at 06:15 and an unlucky wait has you reaching the gate at 06:58, three minutes after they have closed it.
By taxi, leave at 06:15, or 06:00 if you still have tickets to collect. Twenty-five minutes at that hour, and the driver puts you at the gate instead of the station.
Tickets are worth checking the night before rather than on the quay. Booked direct with Blue Star, Seajets or Hellenic Seaways, you can usually check in online 48 hours ahead and board off a QR code. Booked through an aggregator, you may be collecting paper at a port kiosk, and that queue adds a quarter of an hour to a morning that has none spare.
Where we would put you for that morning
Both apartments are a few minutes from Evangelismos on the blue line, so the 07:25 morning above is the one we run most often.
- The one-bedroom. Couples and solo travellers. Quiet street, full kitchen, self check-in at any hour.
- The two-bedroom. Families and two couples, and what we would pick for moving four people and eight bags to a ferry.
Either way, send us the sailing time and the gate and we will book the car and tell you when to come down. It is one less thing to sort out on a phone at six in the morning.
Check your dates and see the direct rate. Booking direct means no third-party service fee.
The overnight boats are a different day
Boarding after dark at Piraeus. The Dodecanese boats load in the evening and sail overnight. Photo: KF / Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Rhodes and the Dodecanese, Crete, Lesvos and Chios are all long crossings, 13 to 22 hours depending on the vessel and its stops, and they leave in the afternoon or evening rather than the morning. You sleep on board and arrive the next day.
So the day is yours until mid-afternoon. Take a late checkout, leave the bags with us, and go to the port later; sitting in Piraeus from midday only buys you a long wait. Allow more time than the 07:25 example above, because these are the boats that go from E1 and E2 and you will be carrying a week's luggage the whole way. Departure times move about by day and season more than the Cycladic ones, so check the ticket.
When a Piraeus hotel is the right answer
Mikrolimano, the one corner of Piraeus worth an evening. The Acropolis is on the skyline behind it. Photo: George E. Koronaios / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0
Sometimes it is:
- You are arriving on a late ferry, after the metro has stopped, and flying out the next morning.
- A pre-dawn start with luggage is not realistic for your group, whether that is small children, limited mobility, or simply more bags than a metro platform can absorb.
- Your sailing is very early and you would rather not spend the evening thinking about it.
If that is you, book in Piraeus and eat down at Mikrolimano.
Rafina: where we send you elsewhere
Rafina from the air. The town sits directly behind the quay, which is the whole reason we send early sailings here instead of keeping them in Athens. Photo: Hansueli Krapf / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0
Rafina is the second port, serving Mykonos, Tinos, Andros and much of Evia. It sits about 30 km out on the other side of Attica, which is 50 minutes to an hour in a car and €55 to €70. That drive decides everything else here.
The fast boats to Mykonos go at about 07:05. An hour in the car, plus a margin you would want at that hour, means leaving the centre at half past five. So for a Rafina ferry before 07:00, stay in Rafina. The Hotel Avra is 200 metres from the ramp and runs an airport shuttle, so if you land the evening before you can go straight out there and skip Athens altogether.
After about 08:00 you can leave the centre at a reasonable hour and still be there in time, with a transfer booked the night before. Between 07:00 and 08:00 the hour in the car lands you in the middle of the early rush, so we would move out to Rafina the evening before.
If you are set on the public bus, check where it leaves from on the day. Sources disagree about whether the Rafina service now starts at Nomismatokopio on the blue line or still runs from the Mavromateon terminal at Pedion tou Areos and only calls at Nomismatokopio en route. Turning up at the wrong one costs you the boat, so confirm it with KTEL Attikis directly rather than any blog, ours included.
Lavrio: the airport is closer than the city
Lavrio. Quiet, small and a long way from central Athens. Photo: FocalPoint / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0
Lavrio serves Kea and Kythnos, and seasonally Serifos, Sifnos and Milos. It sits about 60 km from central Athens and about 35 km from the airport, and takes roughly 45 minutes by car from the airport.
The €40 flat fare does not cover this run. It applies to the airport and central Athens only, so Lavrio is on the meter: budget €50 to €70, more after midnight, and settle the price before you set off rather than at the port gate. From the city it is over an hour and more expensive still.
Which is why, if you are flying in and sailing from Lavrio, you should sleep near the airport and cross in the morning. Coming into Athens first costs you hours in each direction and leaves you further from the boat than when you landed.
If you are already in town, allow an hour and a half in the car and leave about three hours before departure.
Flying out early from Athens airport
Start with the time you need to be at the terminal rather than your flight time, which on its own will not tell you whether the metro is any use. Two hours ahead for an international flight, ninety minutes for a domestic one. The blue line takes about 40 minutes from the centre, but the airport branch is not like the rest of the line. Airport services start later, and they run only every 36 minutes, so missing one costs you over half an hour and the metro is either comfortable or useless with little in between.
Most line 3 trains do not go to the airport; they turn back at Doukissis Plakentias. Only the ones showing an aeroplane symbol and Airport on the front and on the platform display run the whole way. Board the wrong one and you are changing trains halfway with your luggage.
Coming the other way, the last train from the airport is around 23:30. If you land at 21:40 and your bag is slow, that margin disappears quickly, and a delayed flight means a taxi on the flat fare instead.
- At the terminal before about 05:30 → the low-risk answer is to sleep at the airport. The Sofitel Athens Airport is roughly 50 metres from the terminals along a covered walkway.
- After about 06:00 → central Athens on the blue line, about 40 minutes, no changes, €9.
- In between → book a transfer. The regulated airport flat fare is about €40 by day and €55 between midnight and 05:00.
Check the total before you book the airport hotel
The reason to use the airport hotel is that you can walk to the terminal. At 04:00 that takes the train and the taxi out of your morning, which on a tight connection is worth paying for.
It is not automatically the cheaper option, though most people assume it is. Roughly, for two people in summer:
- Airport hotel. Booking sites list the Sofitel from about €230, with averages well above that in season. The Greek climate-resilience levy adds up to €15 a night on a five-star room between April and October. Dinner is at airport prices because there is nowhere else to go.
- Central Athens. Our apartments start around €120, and the same levy on a short-term rental is €8 a night in high season rather than €15. Two airport taxis on the regulated flat fare are €40 each way, charged per car, not per person, so four people pay it once. Or €9 a head on the metro if the timing works.
More often than not the central option comes out lower even after paying for the car both ways, and you have had an evening in Athens rather than a room by a runway. Both sides move with the season though, so run it on your own dates rather than trusting our numbers.
If the gap turns out to be small and missing the flight is unthinkable, take the airport hotel. If the total matters more, check our dates and we will book the car.
Athens is a good city for a long layover, since the metro runs straight into the centre. Count the round trip, roughly 40 minutes each way plus security, before you decide what will fit.
What a port hotel is worth
On most Piraeus mornings it saves you 20 to 30 minutes. Out of E5 to E7, where the bulk of the morning sailings go from, it saves you almost nothing. It earns its money when the transfer itself is the hard part for your group, or when you are arriving late rather than leaving early.
It costs you the evening. Piraeus, Rafina and Lavrio are working ports, and outside Mikrolimano there is not much reason to be in any of them after dark.
If your dates allow it, stay two nights
One night covers a straightforward Piraeus connection. Two nights give you a day in Athens that is not organised around the ferry.
It matters more coming back. Most island trips end with a flight home, and stepping off the last ferry into Piraeus is a poor moment to start looking for a room. Keep one base for both ends and there is somewhere to leave the bags on the final day and nothing to arrange in the middle. Ask about the return night when you book the outbound one; we can usually hold both.
Where we fit
We host two apartments in Kolonaki, on the blue line at Evangelismos. The train to Piraeus is about 25 minutes, or 35 to 40 door to port once you have walked down and waited for it. The airport is about 40 minutes on the same line. Neither needs a change of line. A taxi to Piraeus is around €20 and takes about 25 minutes at that hour.
On a one-night stop, four things do the work:
- Self check-in, so a 23:00 arrival off a delayed flight does not need us awake.
- A kitchen, which sounds minor until you are leaving at 05:30 and nothing in Athens is open.
- A quiet residential street, because you are trying to sleep before a short night.
- We book the car. Send us the sailing and the gate.
Book with us if you are sailing from Piraeus at any hour, if you are on one of the afternoon boats and want the day in the city, or if you are flying out and would rather spend the evening in Athens than beside a runway.
Check your dates, or send us a WhatsApp with your ferry time, port and gate and we will tell you what time to leave, booking or no booking.
Do not book with us if your Rafina ferry leaves before 07:00, if you are sailing from Lavrio, or if you are arriving on a late ferry after the metro has stopped. In those three the port or the airport is the better answer.
If the answer is not us
- Rafina ferry before 07:00 → Hotel Avra, about 200 metres from the ramp, with an airport shuttle so you never need to come into Athens.
- Sailing from Lavrio → near the airport, then a metered car across in the morning, budgeting €50 to €70 and agreeing the fare first.
- Arriving on a late ferry, flying out next morning → Piraeus, and eat at Mikrolimano.
- Not sure which port you sail from → your ticket, then the Piraeus Port Authority departures board.
An early flight is different. The airport hotel may well be right for you even if you would stay in town for a ferry, and the comparison is further up.
If you are choosing between neighbourhoods rather than between ports, our Athens neighbourhood guide covers that, and getting around Athens covers tickets and transport generally.
Written by Galinos Giaglis, who has lived in Kolonaki since 2014 and hosts two apartments there with Sissi Filippidou. Between them they have put several hundred guests onto ferries and early flights out of Athens, and walked the length of Piraeus more times than either would like. The apartments are licensed under the Greek tourism authority: ΣΗΜΑ ΕΟΤ 1205203 and 1253877. Contact us if something here is out of date.
Last verified July 2026. This guide is reviewed each quarter and after any change to the Attica timetables.