Chios Island National Airport ground transport

Chios has an airport almost inside its capital — three kilometres south of the town and two from the beach at Karfas, close enough that the approach passes over the hotels. That makes arriving straightforward in a way it is not on most Greek islands: a KTEL express bus runs into town for roughly €1.50 in ten minutes, and a taxi costs single figures to low teens. The complication is everything beyond the capital. Chios is the fifth-largest Greek island, and its famous mastic villages — Pyrgi with its geometric black-and-white facades, the fortified maze at Mesta, Olympi — lie 25 to 35 kilometres south down a road that winds through hills and takes longer than the map suggests. KTEL runs village services from the town's bus stations a few times a day on weekdays and less at weekends, which is adequate for islanders and awkward for visitors on a schedule. The same applies to Volissos in the north-west and the beaches at Emporios. So the pattern here is: bus or taxi for the short hop into town, hire car for the island. One more thing worth knowing — the harbour in Chios Town runs the crossing to Cesme on the Turkish coast in about ninety minutes, and a significant share of visitors arrive that way rather than through the terminal, which changes the arithmetic entirely if you are coming from Izmir.