Naxos

Naxos sailings leave from the Cyclades cluster — typically E4, E6, E7, E9 or E10, with E7 the usual high-speed berth. Piraeus runs about four kilometres end to end, so the gate on your ticket decides whether the metro drops you outside the door or forty minutes away.

Gates are reassigned in high season; check the boards at the port entrance on the day. Our Piraeus port guide has the full layout.

Ferries dock at Chora, the island capital, and the quay is the town — the waterfront cafés start where the ramp ends and the Portara, the marble gate on the islet opposite, is a ten-minute walk. There is no transfer, no second port, no shuttle to arrange.

This is a real difference from Santorini, where the ferry port sits far below the villages and every arrival involves a bus or taxi up the cliff.

Naxos sits in the middle of the Cyclades and the connections show it. From our timetable:

• Santorini — 8 sailings, about 65 minutes. Blue Star and SeaJets.
• Ios — 6 sailings, roughly 40 minutes.
• Mykonos — 4 sailings, about 35 minutes, with Fast Ferries, Golden Star and SeaJets.
• Irakleia and the Small Cyclades — 4 sailings, around 90 minutes, partly on the local Small Cyclades Lines boat.

Because Mykonos and Santorini are both under 70 minutes away, Naxos works as a base in a way that neither of them does — you can day-trip to the famous islands and sleep somewhere cheaper and quieter.

Irakleia, Schinoussa, Koufonisia and Donousa are served partly by the big ferries and partly by a small local vessel that threads between them. Sailings are fewer, seasonal, and sometimes weather-dependent in a way the Piraeus route is not.

If these islands are the point of the trip, build the itinerary around their timetable first and fit Naxos around it — not the reverse.

From roughly July to early September the meltemi blows hard from the north. It is the high-speed craft that suspend first; Blue Star's conventional ships handle the same conditions and keep running.

Two practical consequences. If you have a flight home from Athens, do not put a fast catamaran on the last day. And if a sailing is cancelled, the conventional ferry the following morning is usually the first thing that moves — book it before the queue forms.

The full seven-a-day frequency belongs to July and August. From late May to late September you still get several daily options; outside that the fast craft largely stop and Naxos falls back to the year-round Blue Star service, which runs but on a much reduced schedule.

May, June and September give you the timetable without the crowds and without the worst of the wind.

Naxos is the largest of the Cyclades and the interior is genuinely mountainous — the villages of the Tragaea, the marble quarries above Apollonas, the long west-coast beaches from Agios Prokopios south. Buses run from Chora to the main beaches and villages, but a car or scooter opens the island up in a way it does not on smaller neighbours.

Arriving without a vehicle is fine if you are staying near Chora; if you are heading inland, arrange transport before you sail rather than at the quay.