Travelling around Greece by bus and ferry

We flew into Athens and from there did some journeys around the Peloponese and a few islands as part of a three week trip travelling around Greece by bus and ferry, so these notes just relate to my personal experiences there, mid September to early October 2022. We found it difficult to find some of this information online before we went, so here are my notes in case they help someone else!

Helpfully, Citymapper works in Athens and we found that really useful to navigate by foot/public transport.

For longer trips, read on for the notes of what and how we booked in advance and how that played out on the actual journeys:

Buses for long journeys

Booking bus tickets online

We booked all our bus trips online before our trip started. Different companies run the buses in different areas and you’ll need to book from the relevant company – I’ve put links for all the routes we did below.

Note that you can’t book buses too far in advance online. We were trying to be really organised and book our tickets about a month in advance but it wouldn’t let us. At the time we thought it wasn’t possible to book online but we realised maybe we were trying too soon. We tried again closer to the time and it worked!

Planning your connections

Some of the routes only run once or twice a day and because they are operated by different companies they don’t necessarily connect that well. If you do have to change in a town make sure you look up each leg to factor that in. When we travelled from Olympia to Nafplio, not only did we have to first get from Olympia to Pyrgos for the main bus journey, we then had to change in Tripoli. The only way we could do it was to get an early bus with a 4 hour stop there. It was actually pretty nice as we walked into the town and had a coffee in the square but just something to be aware of!

We used the following bus routes for our trip:

Bus from Athens to Delphi: Buy tickets from KTEL N. Fokidas, which leaves from KTEL Liosion (Bus Terminal B)

Bus from Athens to Ancient Olympia: Buy tickets to Pyrgos from KTEL ILIAS S.A., which leaves from KTEL Bus Terminal A, Kifisou, then a local bus to Olympia (buy the tickets at the bus station when you arrive at Pyrgos)

Bus from Ancient Olympia to Nafplio: Buy tickets from Pyrgos to Tripoli from KTEL ILIAS S.A., which leaves from Pyrgos bus station, then buy tickets from Tripoli to Nafplio from the bus station when you get there.

Bus from Nafplio to Athens: Buy tickets from KTEL Argolida, which leaves from Nafplio bus station and arrives at KTEL Bus Terminal A, Kifisou. We then headed to Mykonos so we used the BEAT app to get a taxi to Piraeus but you can check Citymapper for public transport connections.

Swap your email tickets at the bus station before travel

You’ll be emailed tickets to print but you need to swap these for proper tickets at the bus station. We found this out by accident when asking which stop number we needed to go to – I think it’s okay if you’re not able to (there are times when it’s not possible – the Delphi bus station is actually a restaurant) but the ticket checker was always happier with the swapped tickets.

Buses leave on time

I’m sure there are exceptions but every bus we took left at exactly the time it was scheduled to leave. Make sure you’re there about half an hour early to give you time to swap tickets and get on. They’ll let you on with exactly the right amount of time for everyone to get their luggage in and into their seats before leaving exactly on time. When I was researching the buses I kept seeing people say that if you’re not there early your seat might get given to someone else – I don’t think that’s true, seats are allocated and they stay that way from what we saw, but I’d be interested to hear if anyone has had that happen.

Seat numbers

Each ticket has a seat number – when you book your tickets online you can choose which seats you’d like. Make sure you sit in the correct seats! The numbers are often on the aisle side of the part of the seat where your bum goes. If someone is sitting in your seat show them your ticket and ask them to move – don’t think you’re being more polite by just leaving it. More people will likely get on at later stops, you’ll be in their seat and the conductor will have unpick the whole mess. We saw this happen a lot!

Ferries

Ferries to the islands depart from Piraeus, which is easy to get to by Metro. We spent quite a bit of time there so my notes on useful places for food and drink are in my post here.

Booking ferries online

Ferryhopper: Pre-book ferries from Piraeus to the islands.

You have to check in online 48 – 2 hours before departure – get the app from the website above so you can do this easily on the move.

Metro

The Metro in Athens is really easy to use. There’s a good website with information and route maps here.

Remember that the airport metros are every half hour, though – us and everyone else somehow forgot that and were really confused when the metro we were on stopped at Doukissis Plakentias station, followed by lots of others doing the same. We’d just missed the airport one so had to wait nearly half an hour for the next one, which we should have expected.

Taxis

Taxis seemed more affordably priced in Greece than they are in the UK. We used the BEAT app to ‘hail’ taxis on a couple of occasions.

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These are the things I found useful to know when I was visiting Greece in September and October 2022 as part of a three week trip around Athens, the Peloponnese and a few islands. You can read more about that trip here.