HOW TO GET TO SANTORINI FROM ATHENS BY FERRY

01 Jun HOW TO GET TO SANTORINI FROM ATHENS BY FERRY

Leaving Athens was both sad and thrilling, and a bit in a hurry as well

As previously anticipated we had to catch the Ferry at 18.00 and, after had wandered in Athens like idiots wasting a lot of time, we found ourselves almost runnin after a leaving ship..

Here below some useful information on how to reach Santorini from Athens based on our experience:

BY AIRPLANE

The fastest and more comfortable way to reach the island would probably be by airplane: it takes approx 1 hour from Athens, and the island is actually well connected internationally so you can probably fly home from there or reach the island directly.

Some of the international (and low cost!) air lines connecting to Santorini are:

Vueling, Volotea, Easyjet, Air Berlin, and you can reach it with greek domestic line Aegean Air from Athens.

BY FERRY

Reaching Santorini by Ferry takes longer, but it’s a lot cheaper, and possibly funnier.

Depending on when you are leaving, you get to see a lot of the Aegean sea, I never knew the Cyclades were so near one to the other, as I could almost count them all!

There are several Ferry lines connecting Athens to Santorini from the port of Pireaus:

Blue Star Ferries, Sea Jets, Hellenic Seaways, and many others.

On Go Ferry you can browse all of them to find the option that suits you best, and book online, as we did.

We chose the Ferry line Blue Star Ferries: the other lines were actually faster but they left too early in the morning and we chose a later ferry cause we are very lazy

Blue Star Ferries is also the cheapest one: only 38,00 EUR/one way!

This is the price of the cheapest option – a normal seat (the one we chose), you can purchase different options of seats and even cabins, at different prices.

I didn’t mind at all the cheapest option though, the crossing takes only a few hours, on board you can buy wireless internet -3€ for 1hour- and there are several cafes and restaurants were you can chill in, not to mention that you can simply sit outside and enjoy the sun and the crossing.

The crossing wasn’t so amusing for Gio instead, who was seasick, bored to death and annoyed me for the whole trip wanting attention

leaving Pireaus

views of the Cyclades islands

leaving Santorini back to Pireaus

 
depending on the timetable you choose,

on the way back the Ferry will briefly stop at Naxos and Paros

BOOK YOUR TRANSFER IN ADVANCE FROM YOUR HOTEL

We arrived at Santorini at 00.35, all of us passengers were left standing by the ramp while this opened during the manouver so it seemed as if we might sink any minute from the sea flooding in.

I was thrilled and excited, Gio was about to puke in my bag.

I had previously booked a transfer from my hotel so we had a fat greek bloke waiting for us that drove us up the narrow and bending streets of the island.

The villages lay so high on the crest of the Island that you woudn’t imagine!

It was dark and that evening must have been stormy, cause once up all we could see was a thick fog moving very fast with the wind, as we were inside a cloud.

AND A BIT OF PERSONAL DRAMA (HOW UNEXPECTED OF ME…)

Once reached the top of the village of Imerovigli, after an amusing trip with greek music playing aloud and several charms hanging from every corner of the van that were dangling on my head at every curve, the guy offloaded quickly our luggages and left us in the middle of the running fog saying that our hotel was just down the stairs.

Now, have you ever been or seen pictures of Santorini?

The villages spread on the top of an old sank volcano, and develop downwards in a maze of streets and stairs that create one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

During daytime, the view is unbelivable, you feel as you are surrounded by the blue and can touch the sea just reaching for it with your hand from your room’s terrace, but in that foggy dark we felt as we were surrounded by a dark void, in which we could fall in any step.

At something like 01.30 in the morning, with all the luggages we attempted to get down the foggy stairs having no clue where we were nor where to head trying to reach the hotel.

We first ended up in a private house. I still thank God there were no dogs there guarding it as I would probably have ended in the sea with all the luggages trying to escape from them.

After having gone back and forth those beautiful stairs -which we started to hate- a million times with all of our bags, luggages, hats and other thousand useless and very heavy stuff with not any sign of human civilization, we started to loose faith and prepared to camp on the beautiful stairs of Imerovigli for the night, when a guy peeped out of a white door shouting something with greek accent. It was Andreas, the owner of our hotel!

We finally went to sleep without paying much attention to the beauty of the place, and a bit concerned after the weird arrival, but the morning after when we opened the window we were totally caught breathless by the stunning beauty of Santorini!

More on Santorini coming soon!

 Have you ever crossed the Aegean Sea?

Do you have any tips?