Ferries from Kos

The same three hundred metres of quay handles boats from Piraeus and boats from Turkey, and the difference between them is a passport queue. Kos Town's harbour is one of the few places in the Aegean where a domestic island hop and an international border crossing tie up within sight of each other, under the walls of a castle built by the Knights of St John.

Domestic and international, side by side

Arriving from another Greek island, you walk off the ramp and into the town within minutes; there is nothing to clear. Arriving from Bodrum or Turgutreis, you are directed through passport control and sometimes customs before you reach the street.

That is a twenty-minute difference on a thirty-minute crossing, and it is the part travellers underestimate. Coming back the other way the same applies in reverse, which is why operators on the Turkish routes ask you to check in well before a sailing that takes less time than the formalities.

The castle is the harbour wall

Nerantzia Castle stands directly over the entrance. In its present form it was built by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who held Kos from 1314 to 1522, and it exists because this harbour was worth defending — the same geography that makes it a convenient port today made it a strategic one then.

The old town, the ancient agora and the archaeological museum are all within a few hundred metres of the ramp, which is unusual: most Aegean ferry quays are a bus ride from anything.

What ties up here, and what does not

Kos Town takes the scheduled network: the Piraeus ships, Rhodes, Kalymnos, Leros, Patmos, Nisyros and the Turkish crossings. Cruise ships use a dedicated pier a few hundred metres along.

What does not come here matters just as much. The island has three other harbours — Mastichari, Kardamena and Kefalos — and they serve different islands entirely. The Kos travel guide sets out which port goes where, including the detail that the airport is far closer to Mastichari than to this quay.

On the quayside

Ticket offices, cafés, an information point and car hire are all on the waterfront. The central bus terminal on Kleopatras Street is 500 to 600 metres away and is where the services to the island's other ports leave from.

For the Turkish sailings, allow more time than the crossing suggests and carry a passport rather than an identity card — this is an external Schengen border, short though it is.

Season

The Turkish crossings and the small-island boats are warm-season services and thin out from October. The Blue Star ships to Rhodes and Piraeus keep running through winter because they are the island's lifeline rather than a holiday product.

The busiest hours on the quay are the middle of the day in July and August, when the Bodrum boats, the Rhodes catamaran and a cruise call can coincide. May and late September give the same connections with a harbour you can walk across.