Balos... What a beautiful place - Balos is one of the best beaches i have visited. The scenery from kissamos port to the beach is amazing too. Water is shallow n you can go very deep inside. You can capture memories for a lifetime here. Opportunity to snorkel also exist but variety of fishes is limited. Good food n drink options available on the boat as well. A must visit place

Recommended excursion - Very good service, punctuality, translation into 5 languages, very friendly guides and driver, very good food service , excellent boat and paradise place

Take the Balos and Gramvousa tour - Took the tour to Balos and Gramvousa and it is spectacular. Our tour host Linda who we also had for another tour spoke several languages including English and made it fun. Food and drinks can be purchased on the boat and it is a pleasant boat ride to the locations. Bring sunscreen lots of sun. The views and the water are amazing. Great value.

Turquoise waters - Balos Lagoon was spectacular , crystal turquoise waters. Gramvousa was lovely and secluded but very rocky. Food on the ferry was fantastic.

Guide and beaches were wonderful, ferry less so! - Helena (tour guide) was wonderful, so sweet, so knowledgeable! And was always looking out for us. Beaches were euphoric. But I'm sad to say guys - I had a bad experience on the ferry straight away - I got on and the photographer immediately and unprofessionally screamed at me - (I think my foot was in a photo, or didn't like that I didnt want one or something). I was pretty shaken and felt pretty unwelcome. We're also going to tranquil beautiful places so was hoping the ferry would be more relaxed, not the case after the screaming at, loud bad pop music played during the long ferry rides which also very uncomfortable!

Not worth the time - Our pick up guide was lovely enough so not a commentary on them but the actual experience. It took us from pick up in old town chania to the bus TWO hours. Then load in time to the ferry, load out time. We were picked up at 8am and didn’t get to balos til nearly noon? The ferry had hundreds of people and it felt like we were being herded. The boat was so overcrowded with people having nowhere to sit. You get to balos, which is beautiful but small and overcrowded by this giant boat of people. Repeat long board/herding to next site. By the time we got back to the bus at the end of the day, we decided we weren’t going to spend another two hours on the bus and paid $65 for a cab. The experience was not worth the time at all. If you have all the time in the world, I guess it’s fine but we spent most of the day just being herded. We did another experience the next day that also had a bus pick up and was even further but travel time was better, group size was better and we had allllll day afterwards. Really depends on what you’re looking for but we would not recommend this particular excursion

Boat not fit for travelling in the rain! - I think the trip should have been cancelled because the weather was terrible. We arrived in Balos with pouring rain and thunderstorms and proceeded with a 3 hour stop although there is no protection from the weather on the location. When we got back to the boat we were wet and cold. We found that the boat has no capacity to accommodate that number of passengers in wet weather. The canopies covering half the seats were filled with rain water that would gush down unexpectedly on the poor people sitting below. Some seats have no cover at all. The boat was at full capacity so we all had to huddle standing in the limited protected areas. The weather luckily improved for the second stop, but the boat remained wet. I thought both Balos and Gramvousa are definitely worth visiting but if you are going to pack the boat to full capacity the trip should only be done in good weather. Date of travel 18/9/24

Disappointing day trip to Balos beach - We paid about 28 euros for transportation from Chania to the port. (Total 54 euros for the "trip") It was more convenient to take a bus for 6 euros. The cruise itself was shocking. 600 plus people on a ship, with no place to sit, going down to the beach without any suitable services for such a number of people. No beach, beautiful As it is, not worth it.