Information for Athens Visitors
Here are some links and tips for people visiting Athens. You can
contribute to this document through pull requests on its GitHub
repository.
Contents
Maps and Guides
Other Sites
Transportation
Web sites
From the
Airport to downtown Athens (Syntagma Square)
Metro
Exit the airport building, cross the street, and use the connecting
pedestrian bridge on the top level to reach the metro and suburban rail
station. Purchase a metro ticket to Athens and board
the metro train (blue line) going to Athens (Egaleo),
not the suburban railway. Exit at Syntagma station. The
last train leaves the airport at 23:30.
Bus
You can take an express bus X95 to Syntagma square (the last
station).
Taxi
Depending on the time of the day and the traffic a taxi should set
you back by around 25 or
36€. You can also reserve a (more expensive) car transfer for about
52€ through this site.
Note that the official name of the Athens International Airport is
“Eleftherios Venizelos”, after a Greek politician of the early 20th
century. You will often see it abbreviated as “El. Venizelos”. Now you
know this is not in Spanish.
Getting Around in Athens
Athens is a challenging city to get around, even for its hardened
locals. If you thought New Yorkers are tough, think again.
Underground
The best way to get around is the underground (the metro). General
information on the Athens metro can be found here. A
map of the metro network in PDF format is also available here.
The map is geographically accurate, which means that it gives you a
sense of the real distances in Athens, but it lacks the elegance and the
functionality of Harry Beck’s maps.
Tram
Tram lines connect the Athens city centre with its southern suburbs.
Trams are a convenient means for a pleasant visit to the seaside.
Information on the tram can be found here. A map can be
found here.
Bus, Trolleybus
Buses and trolleybuses go about anywhere in the Athens metropolitan
area. They are cheap, but they suffer from traffic jams, and they seldom
follow the published schedule (when such exists). More information on
buses can be found here and information on
the routes can be found here.
Taxis
Taxis are cheap by European and American standards, if you get a ride
with an honest driver. Athenian taxi drivers are notorious for their
rip-offs, charging foreigners and even unwary Athenians more than double
the actual price, either by forgetting to use the meter, or by using a
hacked device. The best is to ask a local how much a given ride would
cost, so that you know you are being taken for a ride. If you want to
complain, ask the driver to take you to the police. Sharing a taxicab
(but not the fare) is common; just hail a (full) taxi and shout your
destination to the taxi driver.
Renting a Car
All major rental agencies have offices in Athens, and there are many
local companies as well. Driving is not recommended inside Athens, while
parking around the area of the hotel is a nightmare. It is better to use
rented vehicles for excursions only.
Things to Do
In Athens
There are plenty of things to do and see in Athens; sightseeing alone
will fill several days, the night life is vibrant, there are hundreds of
cinemas and theatres, and there seems to be a restaurant and coffee shop
around every corner. Some starting points:
- The Acropolis
and the outstanding Acropolis
Museum, which was ranked 8th in the TripAdvisor’s Travellers Choice
Awards of the 25 Best Museums in the world for 2017.
- The walk around Acropolis and the old city. It is possible to walk
around Acropolis and the old city (Plaka), using a network of pedestrian
ways. This can be a very nice experience, even serene if you do it in
the dusk. It will take a few hours for the full walk.
- The National
Archaeological Museum. The biggest collection of Greek Antiquities
anywhere in the world. It is also worth visiting to get a close glimpse
of the Antikythera
mechanism.
- The Museum of Cycladic Art.
Art from the Cyclades, the islands in the middle of the Aegean Sea,
dating a long time before the classical period. A modern, well designed
museum, bang in the city centre. Cycladic art is abstract, like modern
art in many ways.
- The Benaki Museum. An eclectic
collection of Greek art, near the Museum of Cycladic Art. Its roof
restaurant is one of the nicest settings to have dinner in Athens.
- The Byzantine Museum.
The Byzantine Empire is the latest fashion in American and British
history departments. The Byzantine Museum has a good collection, it is
near the Museum of Cycladic Art and the Benaki Museum, and is housed on
a fine example of byzantine architecture (contemporary).
- Museum of Popular
Musical Instruments. This is in the old part of the city, and will
give you an idea of traditional music styles and history.
- Herakleidon Museum:
Science, Art, & Mathematics You might be interested to see there
the forty prints of aurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972). Verify that they
will be on display when you visit, or see whether some other of its
exhibitions interests you.
- SNFCC Stavros Niarchos
Foundation Cultural Center is one of the main attractions in Athens.
It’s a public space, where everyone has free access and can participate
in a multitude of cultural, educational, athletic, environmental and
recreational activities and events. It includes the Greek National
Opera, the National Library of Greece as well as the Stavros Niarchos
Park, one of the largest green areas in Athens, covering 21
hectares.
Outside Athens
If you do have some days to spare, you may want to visit a bit of
Greece outside Athens (although Athenians will affirm that all Greece is
Athens). Easy trips include:
- Sounion.
(One of the proposed excursions.) The tip of the Attika peninsula, on
the south-east of Athens. A temple to Poseidon, and a
favorite destination for sunsets. Try to find Byron’s graffiti among the
ruins.
- Meteora. A set of
monasteries on top of huge blocks of rock. They featured in the James
Bond film “For Your Eyes Only”.
- Delphi. The place
of the famous oracle, on the foot of mount Parnassus.
- Mycenae, Epidaurus, Nafplio. Mycenae
(Mikines) was the fortress of Agamemnon, the chief
of the Greeks in the war against Troy. Epidavros is a marvelously
preserved ancient theatre with unique acoustic in a fantastic setting.
Donald Knuth
lectured here. Nafplion is a city with a nice old town and dramatic
fortresses, the capital of Greece from 1829 to 1834, and a place to
sample wine from the Nemea region.
- Aegina,
Hydra, Poros, Spetses. These islands are on the south of Athens,
easily reachable by hydrofoil. Aegina was the first capital of the
modern Greek state, in 1828-1829. Nafplion became capital next, and
Greece lost the opportunity to have Manhattan in the Mediterranean.
Hydra is a small island where cars are forbidden, a hotspot of the hippy
movement in the 1960s. Poros is further south. Spetses is the most
remote of all from Athens, but it offers the best beaches. It is also
the setting of John Fowle’s novel “The Magus”.
- The islands in the Aegean and Ionian sea.
Spring and autumn are the ideal times of the year for visiting the
islands. By avoiding the peak tourist season you can enjoy even the most
popular islands in (relative) peace. Some particularly nice islands to
visit are: Santorini, Mykonos, Paros, Rodos, Kerkyra, Milos, Skiathos and Patmos.
- Olympos If you
enjoy trecking, May is a nice month to climb the highest mountain of
Greece, the home of the ancient Greek gods, Olympos. Even in the summer,
the weather is mild and pleasantly cool; if you’re in a good physical
condition, climbing to the peak isn’t technically difficult, and the
experience is truly unique. I wouldn’t recommend attempting to conquer
Olympos’s peak in the winter, unless you’re a very experienced
mountaineer.
- Spring and Autumn in Greece is warm, but not too hot; maximum
temperatures hover around 30 degrees Celsius. If you are interested in
swimming, the conditions are fine, but remember but the water may feel a
bit chilly at first. The summer is quite hot, temperatures can easilly
reach 40 degrees Celsius. It very seldom rains in the summer; you can
actually depend on it. In the winter the temperatures can be around
10–20 degrees Celsius, and on some years we even see some snow in the
center of Athens.
Food and Fun
For eating, drinking, and getting merry, you should know the
following.
- Traditional Greek food is supposed to be very healthy, based
exclusively on virgin olive oil. The best olive oil arguably comes from
the south of the Peloponnese.
- You can often substitute a lunch or dinner with a snack you will eat
on the way. Two tasty food types are pies and souvlaki. Pies
come filled with cheese (tyropita), spinach
(spanakopita), a sausage (loukanikopita), or other
more exotic ingredients. Souvlaki, literally is a small spit. This is
used for grilling small pre-cut meat pieces. You can order these plain
(kalamaki); 2-3 of them and some fried potatoes can make a nice
lunch. Alternatively, you can buy these wrapped in a fried patty
(pita), which is also filled with tomatoes, fried potatoes,
tzatziki (youghurt with garlic). One or two such
pita-souvlaki can satisfy your hunger. Finally, you can ask the
pita to be filled with gyros: meat pieces gradually roasted on
a lateral spit and cut alongside it.
- Greek wine is generally good value. You will not find Robert Parker
quality here, but for around 20 - 30€ you can get a pretty decent wine
in a restaurant, and a very good wine in specialist shops. Greek wine
producers are small by international standards, so there is not much
export. The best wine growing regions are Nemea, in the Peloponnese, and
Drama, in the north of Greece. If you are into wine, you could try the
Greek varieties, like Agiorgitiko (Nemea, red), Xinomavro (Drama, red),
Robola (Kefalonia, white), and others.
- As soon as the temperature reaches 20 degrees Celsius, Greeks
instinctively reach for a “Frappe
Coffee”. Although you may find it in other parts of the world, the
real Frappe is here. Drinking Frappe is a ceremony in Greece. The froth
must be thick, and Greeks can easily spend two hours sipping from a
single glass. Making the right Frappe is an art. The best Frappe in the
world is served at the Lentzos coffee shop in the Pagrati district.
Decent Frappe is also served at the Loubardiaris cafe near
Akropolis.
Things for Geeks
- Both The Rough Guide and The Lonely Planet series are dependable for
Athens and Greece in general.
- Foreign press is available at central kiosks.
- The Athens Voice free newspaper (available throughout the city every
Thursday) has a few pages and listings in English
- The Odyssey magazine covers
Greeks for expats.
Reading List