Day trips from Kos by boat: Bodrum, Kalymnos, Pserimos and the rest

Kos has three ferry ports, and the trip you want decides which one you go to. Kos Town does almost everything, Mastichari does Kalymnos, and Kardamena is not a ferry port at all. Bodrum in Turkey is 20 to 30 minutes away on the fast boat, but it needs a passport and a port tax on top of the ticket. Rhodes, the trip people ask us about most, barely works in a single day.

The three ports, and which trip leaves from which

Kos has three ferry ports: Kos Town, also written as Chora, Mastichari on the north coast, and Kefalos in the west. Almost every day trip on this page leaves from Kos Town. Mastichari exists, as far as a visitor is concerned, for Kalymnos. Kefalos is on the list of ports, but we have nothing reliable to tell you about scheduled day-trip sailings from there, so ask at the quay before you build a day around it.

Then there is our own harbour. Kardamena has boats leaving it most summer mornings, and they are excursion boats. There is no scheduled licensed ferry from Kardamena, and excursion boats are not licensed to carry one-way passengers. You buy a return day trip and come back that afternoon on the same hull.

Every day trip, compared

Fares below are published starting prices as of the 2026 season, and a starting price is exactly that. Crossing times vary by vessel, because a catamaran and a conventional ferry are two different afternoons.

Getting to the port from Kardamena

This is the part guides skip, and it decides whether your day works. Kardamena is about 26 km from the Kos Town quay. The KTEL bus covers it in roughly 40 minutes and costs €4.20 each way under the fares revised on 13 March 2026. Tickets come from the driver and you should carry cash, because card is not accepted on all routes. Sunday services are severely reduced, and there is no service at all on Good Friday, Easter Sunday or Easter Monday. We will not print departure times we cannot stand behind, so call KTEL Kos on 22420-22292 or check ktel-kos.gr the day before.

A taxi is the other way. There is no official published Kos taxi tariff sheet available online, so agree the fare out loud before you set off. For scale, the airport rank to Kardamena typically runs at around €20 and the airport rank to Kos Town at about €40.

For Mastichari and the Kalymnos boat, a car or a taxi is realistically what you need. The KTEL fares we can quote all begin at the airport or in Kos Town, so confirm any cross-island connection on the phone rather than assuming. This is one of the arguments for hiring a car for two or three days, and we set out the whole case in our honest answer on whether you need a car in Kos. Parking here is free and private, right in front of the building.

Bodrum: passport, port tax and the honest verdict

The fast boat takes 20 to 30 minutes and the conventional ferry 45 to 60. In season there are around nine crossings a day, clustered around 09:00 to 11:00, midday to 15:00, and 16:00 to 18:30, which is enough of a spread to build a real day around.

The money, as of the 2026 season: around €30 to €40 one way, €55 to €75 return, typically €20 to €35 for a child. Then the part people miss, a port tax of about €5 to €10 on top, not always included in the price you see online.

You need your passport. Bodrum is in Turkey, so you leave the European Union in the morning and come back in the evening, and an identity card will not do. It should have been issued within the previous 10 years and be valid for at least 3 months beyond the day you leave the Schengen area. Ticket offices usually want your passport details the day before travel, so buy in advance. Check Turkey's current entry requirements with your own authorities too, because they depend on your nationality.

One more thing, written as of August 2026. The EU Entry/Exit System, EES, became fully operational on 10 April 2026 and replaces passport stamping with a facial image and fingerprints for non-EU nationals. Reports suggest Greece temporarily suspended biometric registration at its borders for peak summer 2026 to avoid delays at island airports and ports, reverting to manual stamping, with no announced end date. That is not confirmed by a government source, so check the official EU EES page before you travel rather than trusting a blog, this one included.

Worth a day? Once, yes. The crossing is short enough that you are not spending the day on a boat, and the harbour and castle are right there when you land. What it is not is cheap. A family of four is looking at a couple of hundred euros before lunch.

Kalymnos and Pserimos

Kalymnos is the easy one, and we send more guests there than anywhere except Nisyros. It goes from Mastichari, the crossing is 25 to 50 minutes, and in summer there are more than ten crossings a day, from about €8. Operators include ANEM Ferries, ANE Kalymnou and Lafasi.

Ten crossings a day is the number that matters. You are not planning around a single return sailing. Go across in the morning, change your mind at lunchtime, still get home. Kalymnos is the sponge-diving island and now a serious rock-climbing destination, and it feels less holiday-shaped than Kos does.

Pserimos is the small island in between, reached from Kalymnos and Mastichari and by excursion boat from Kos Town. A beach and a handful of tavernas, and that is the whole proposition.

Symi, Patmos, Leros and Tilos

All four leave from Kos Town and all work in a day, with different amounts of effort. Symi takes 1 hour 5 to 1 hour 20 and starts from about €7. The harbour at Gialos is the amphitheatre of ochre and white houses you have seen in photographs of Greece without knowing where it was. The most photogenic arrival in the Dodecanese, and the least effortful of the longer hops.

Leros is about 55 minutes from about €7, and nobody puts it on a list. Italian rationalist architecture at Lakki, a working island, very few day trippers. Tilos is about 1 hour 10 from about €7.50, small and quiet, known for its birdlife and its walking. Good in May or October, hot in August.

Patmos is about 1 hour 30 from €9.50 to €11.50, and it is the big one. The Monastery of Saint John and the Cave of the Apocalypse sit above Skala, and getting up and back eats into your hours ashore. Plan that day rather than improvise it.

Rhodes, and why it barely works

People ask about Rhodes more than any other trip, and our answer disappoints them.

The Dodekanisos Seaways catamaran takes about 2 hours 5 minutes, the Blue Star ferry about 3 hours 15, and there are roughly 17 sailings a week, so getting there is not the problem. The arithmetic is. A return day on the fast boat is over four hours sitting down, and on the Blue Star closer to six and a half, before you have walked a single street of the old town. On price, ignore the headline "from" figure and budget €40 to €70 one way in season.

Our advice: give Rhodes a night. Morning catamaran, sleep there, back the following evening, and you see the old town in the early evening light when the cruise crowds have gone, which is the only time it is really itself. If a single day is all you have, spend it on Symi or Kalymnos.

Nisyros, in one paragraph

Nisyros is the trip we would put first, and it has its own page because there is too much to say here. The short version: an excursion boat leaves Kardamena harbour at about 09:30 and is back around 16:30, the scheduled ferry from Kos Town takes 50 minutes to 1 hour 30 and runs from about €6 five to seven days a week year round, and you can walk onto the floor of an active crater. The costs that catch people out are in our full guide to the Nisyros volcano day trip.

Piraeus, if you are going on somewhere

Blue Star runs Kos to Piraeus in 8.5 to 9 hours and more, six to seven days a week, from about €46.70. Nobody does this as a day trip. We include it because it is the sailing that turns a week in Kardamena into a longer route through the islands, and a few of our guests each year arrive or leave this way rather than flying. The boat docks in Kos Town, so add the 26 km and the €4.20 bus at each end.

What we would do with one free day

First time on Kos: take Nisyros. It is the only thing within easy reach that is not a beach or a taverna, and it leaves from a harbour you can walk to. Already done Nisyros: take Kalymnos, for the short crossing and the ten sailings a day. If you want the story rather than the beach, take Symi. If you want to have stood in another country, take Bodrum and accept the price.

Whichever you pick, start early and make your coffee in the studio before you go. Every one of ours has a kitchenette with a fridge, and on a morning with a bus and a boat to meet that beats a breakfast buffet. Season matters too, because September crossings are a different experience from August ones, and we go through the calendar in the best time to visit Kos, month by month.

Three ports, one rule. Check the boat that brings you home before you buy the one that takes you out.

Last updated: August 2026