Alexandroupoli Getting there & around

Getting there & away

Water

Ferry

In summer, two or three ferries daily make the two-hour trip to Samothraki (€11 per person, per car €45). Get tickets and departure details from the portside SAOS kiosk or from travel agencies like Sever Travel (25510 22555; sever1@otenet.gr; Megalou Alexandrou 24). SAOS also serves Limnos once weekly (€14.90, five hours).

Alexandroupoli is connected with the Dodecanese by Agoudimos Lines. The ferry leaves Mondays at 11am, stops at Limnos, and continues via Lesvos (€20.90, 11¼ hours), Chios (€27.20, 15¼ hours), Samos (€33.50, 18¾ hours), Kalymnos (€38.50, 23¼ hours), and Kos (€39, 24½ hours) to Rhodes (€44, 28¾ hours). A ferry retracing this route backwards leaves Rhodes every Saturday at 11.45pm.

Summer hydrofoils usually serve Samothraki, but are unpredictable; check locally.

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Land

Bus

From Alexandroupoli’s bus station (25510 26479; Eleftheriou Venizelou 36) buses travel frequently northeast to Feres (€2.30), Soufli (€5, 1½ hours), Didymotiho (€7.20, 1¾ hours) and Orestiada (€8.70, two hours). Another bus terminates at Kipi on the Turkish border (€3.30, three daily).

One daily bus serves Athens (€58, 12 hours), and six go to Thessaloniki (€25.30, six hours). Buses to Kavala (€12.90, three hours) go via Komotini (€5.20, 70 minutes) and Xanthi (€9.10, 1¾ hours).

Train

From the train station (25510 26395) six daily trains serve Thessaloniki (€9.70, seven hours); one continues to Athens (€25, 14 hours). Trains also run northeast to Dikea (€3.80, 2½ hours, seven daily) via Pythio, Didymotiho, Orestiada and Kastanies, where there’s a Turkish border crossing.

Bulgaria

From Alexandroupoli a daily train leaves at 5.30am for Svilengrad (€5, four hours), with connections to Plovdiv and Sofia.

Turkey

The OSE bus to İstanbul leaves at 8.30am (€15, six hours) Tuesday to Sunday. A direct train with sleeper cars to İstanbul leaves nightly at 1am (€36.60, seven hours). Two trains originating in Thessaloniki also pass through en route to İstanbul.

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Air

Alexandroupoli’s Dimokritos Airport is 7km east of town near Loutra.

Olympic Airlines (25510 26361; www.olympicairlines.com; Ellis 6 & Koletti) is downtown; Aegean Airlines (25510 89150; www.aegeanair.com) is at the airport. Both offer four daily flights to/from Athens (€75, 55 minutes). Olympic also has three weekly direct flights to Siteia, Crete (€80, 1¾ hours).

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