- Knossos Palace at Piraeus
The Piraeua-Chania schedule therefore returns to its usual winter format, as an extension of the company's main route via Heraklion i.e. Piraeus-Heraklion-Chania overnight and v-v. This year the extensions aren't even daily. More intense/direct operations return in the build up to Christmas before dropping back to sailing via Heraklion again in January and beyond.
For some reason this year this switch has provoked some public news/commentary, as if people were somehow previously blind to how Grimaldi-Minoan have, since they entered the Chania market, always treated its traffic as secondary to that for Heraklion. In summer there is good money to be made but their presence in Chania year round is still in many ways a spoiler to the established daily direct ANEK-Blue Star service. It will be interesting to see how Chanians feel and behave when their once-beloved community ferry company ANEK is absorbed into the Attica group. I doubt they will ever really take to a Heraklion company (Minoan) owned by Italians (Grimaldi) - but ultimately for many, locals as well as tourists, pricing and timetabling will be the decisive factors.
