All the Things You Need to Know About Travel to Athens, Greece | Greece Travel

whether you're coming to Athens for a day before you hit a Greek island or you're coming to Athens for a week to discover all the things there is to explore here are all the things that that you need to know before you land let's start at the airport how are you going to get from the airport to the city center you have a couple of options you can take the metro you can take the bus and you can take a taxi the Metro will take you to singtagma square it is the most Central Metro station so if you then need to get on another line or if your hotel is near there you should be able to walk there's also a taxi stand there if you need to then get into town and go to your hotel now you may be able to look at the map and say oh no my hotel is closer to another stop and then you can get off there a couple of things that you need to know about the Athens Metro from the airport it takes about 40 minutes give or take depending on what stop you're just stopping at if you're going past and talk but it will take a little bit longer and then the other most important thing that you need to know is that from the airport it stops running around 11 30 at night so if your flight gets in at 10 or later there's a small chance that you might miss that last train so you might want to end up taking the bus the other thing is if you are not going to the center of Athens and you're going to puree us to say get on the ferry the Athens Metro just had an extension and you can now take the metro all the way from the airport to pareas Port I haven't done it yet so I'm not 100 sure how long it takes but I imagine it probably takes about an hour so just something for you to keep in mind so let's say you've decided to take the bus instead it's a little bit different so you're gonna walk out of the building and you're going to immediately turn right and you're going to walk down you will probably see I think it's a little white building and you might see some buses lined up there and that's where you want to go in that little white kiosk building is usually a person selling tickets almost all times of the day and the bus does run 24 hours it does get a little bit less overnight so they may only come every hour so another thing to keep in mind you can either buy your ticket from the person in the kiosk or they have the ticket machines that you can buy electronically there the ticket is five euros and 50 cents right now what I like about the bus is it's a little bit easier if you have a big bag you can just get on with it rather than having to get into the Metro not that the Metro doesn't have escalators and things I just find the bus a little bit easier the bus will take about an hour hour and a half depending on traffic if there's no traffic it might even take less it also takes you to syndago square the nice thing is the taxi stand is right next to it so you can either get in a taxi get on the Metro or walk to your hotel from there the one other thing that I sometimes find is that if a lot of flights have landed at the same time the bus can get crowded the bus that you want to take from the airport to the center is the x95 bus if again you're not going to the center of Athens and you want to take the bus to the port you take the x96 bus your third option is a taxi there is a taxi stand at the airport and if you have a lot of bags or you want to just be dropped straight at your hotel this is the best option for you however I recommend that you pre-book a taxi I like to use a company called Welcome pickups I have a link down in the description box to them they come into the airport and have a little sign with your name on it and they will pick you up and take you straight out to the taxi you then don't have to stand in the line and they know exactly where you're going because you've pre-booked everything in advance and it's really not that much more than the fare the regular fare from the airport during the day to the center of Athens is around 40 euros it is a set fare it does sometimes change so I'm saying 40 because it may go up sometimes and then sometimes we get lucky and it goes down at night it's 55 Euros the other good thing about welcome pickups is they guarantee that your driver speaks English so if you're nervous about that it's another reason to book the taxi all of this leads me to my next tip which is to not rent a car if you're just staying in Athens parking in Athens is extremely difficult a lot of people run around trying to find parking spots when they live here and so to do that while you're here on your vacation is going to be difficult particularly if you're not staying in a hotel with parking and there are not a lot of those options the other thing is you can walk most everywhere in Athens all the tourist spots that you're going to want to see so it's really not necessary so if you are going to go somewhere else after Athens my recommendation is to rent a car when you leave either rent it from one of the places in the city or go back to the airport and pick it up there the nice thing about going back to the airport to pick up your rental car is you're out of the city and then you can just get on the highway you don't have to come back into the crazy traffic of Athens let's talk about where you're going to sleep in Athens now you're probably already figured this out before you got here but I'm going to give you a few of my tips in case you're still trying to make this decision if it's your first time to Athens I recommend that you stay in the placa neighborhood everything is walkable from there and there are lots of restaurants to go to so you're not going to have to wander around the city going where should we eat I don't know I have no idea it'll be very obvious you can walk to the Acropolis you can watch the Acropolis Museum and it's very close to sintogma Monastery Rocky all of the main places are are probably anywhere from a five minute to a 15 minute walk away if you've come to Athens before and you think well placa is great but I don't really want to be in the thick of all the tourists I'd like to stay in a different area where should I stay you have a lot of options now if you still want to be in the tourist areas because you enjoy that Vibe you enjoy the liveliness and you don't mind the crowds and some noise then you can stay in your monasteryaki or Siri those are good options sigtagma all of those are great options still within while you're in the heart of it there you don't hardly have to walk anywhere those are great options if you want a more Athenian feel but still be walkable there are two neighborhoods that I recommend one is kolanaki and the other is kukaki they're both within walking distance of a lot of the sites now a little bit further walk so if you're not mobile these are not great options colonaki in particular because it is up on a hill kolanaki tends to be a little bit more expensive as well so just keep that in mind kukaki is great because it's where a lot of young people in Athens hang out but it's not loud because it's mostly just restaurants and most of the apartments here are very like people who actually live here so the hotels are surrounded by Apartments so it's pretty quiet most people come to Athens to go to a lot of the archaeological sites here in Athens obviously the Acropolis and the Parthenon being one of them what a lot of people don't realize is that when you buy your Acropolis ticket you have the option to buy what they call a multi-day ticket and this gets you into I believe it's seven sites in Athens over five days and it's only 10 euros more than the Acropolis ticket so the Acropolis ticket is 20 euros and the multi-day ticket is 30 Euros so it's actually a pretty decent savings because I believe that if you just go to two other sites then you've more than covered the 30 Euros and you have several days to use it so you don't have to come and hit like four archaeological sites in one day you would be exhausted but it's a great option if you're coming for more than one day and you want to see maybe three or more archaeological sites they do sell this when you go to buy your ticket in person if you want to you can also buy your tickets online I will put a link to that below it is going to ask you what time but don't worry about the time it's just the day that you want the ticket to start that you need to worry about they're not going to say oh you're here at noon and your ticket is until one they're still gonna let you in that's not a problem the nice thing is about the online ticket if you're coming in the summer then you may have you may get to avoid the line to buy your ticket you may still have to wait in line a little bit to even get in because in the summer particularly the Acropolis the sites are really full now let's talk about some of the things that will help you understand Greece a little bit more so that you enjoy your trip the big thing is is that Greece is sort of on its own time things sort of run very slowly here this is particularly true when you're eating out um dishes just sort of appear in random order they don't really all come out at once it may take them a while to come and take your order after you've been given the menu and it may take some time for you to get your check and it's not because they're ignoring you um they're just not going to rush you it's just not the way that things are done here and things take a little bit longer to happen so I would say that if you're in a rush to do something you either need to slow down and do Greek life the Greek way or you might need to do things with a little more planning so if you know you need to be somewhere by like six o'clock in the evening you need to make sure that like you've eaten and given yourself plenty of time for a few hours before that I mentioned the weather and it's probably a really important thing to know about and yeah you can look at the temperatures and things online but sometimes it's not a very good accurate representation of what it actually feels like here and that goes for everywhere it's not just grease in the summer it is extremely hot here it may say in The Weather Channel that it's 90 degrees but it feels even hotter uh particularly in Athens because we just don't get the breeze that the islands do and sometimes the humidity gets high but you have to consider we're surrounded by concrete there are some grease based green spaces in Athens but not a lot so it tends to feel hotter than it really is particularly if you're going up to the Acropolis because there's no shade up there there are like two trees at the top of the hill up there and it usually feels like five to ten degrees hotter up there is there up there than it does down on the street in the off season it tends to get cooler like it's October now and we had lots of days of sun but it wasn't that warm it wasn't cold it was actually really nice but then the last two days it's rained and it's rained and it's been windy and sometimes the storms come and we know about them and sometimes they sort of appear out of nowhere it also means that at night once the sun goes down it gets a little bit cooler and so I recommend that say October to the end of December you bring layers so that way if it's warm during the day and cool at night you're prepared if you're coming in winter so January February March it's going to rain and it's going to be cold yes it does get cold here I think people think that grease is warm all the time and it's just not last year it snowed for five days it's also as I said our rainy season and because grease isn't really built for the winter the buildings are not well insulated and so it feels a little bit colder than it actually is some times particularly with the damp and the lack of insulation another thing that I think is super important to talk about is sort of safety and scams in Athens now I've talked about safety in Athens in another video so I'm just going to briefly talk about it here and I'll link to that other video down in the description box one of the biggest things to know is that on the Metro from the airport into the center it is known that pickpockets will sort of Target tourists so my recommendation is to split up your valuables between bags and then keep all of your bags within your site at all times so if you're going to carry a purse ladies you need to make sure that purse is in front of you it is zipped closed and your hand is on it at all times men do not keep your wallets in your back pocket please keep them in the front in a jacket pocket or in your front pocket with your hand on it and be aware of your surroundings do not get involved in conversation with the person that you're with don't be looking up at the map saying well where are we because you should know the stop that you're getting off in advance and you need to listen for that or look out the window so that you can see the names of the stations the announcement are made in Greek and in English and usually they're pretty audible it's not like New York City where sometimes you don't know what they're saying it's pretty Audible and there are signs in most of the trains and then there are signs at every station to let you know what station you're stopping at there are a couple of scams that you should also sort of be aware of in Athens one is the phone stealing scam which is where you put your phone on the table someone comes up with a piece of paper it could be really small it could be full size paper and usually they're fake trying to sell you something they put the paper in front of your phone and they're telling you about the thing and while they're telling you and distracting you they've stolen your phone another thing is to make sure that if you do have a bag with you that is in front of you probably between your legs and not hanging on the back of your chair because it's unlikely that you're going to be paying attention to that and a lot of the eating that we do here in Athens even in the winter is outside the other thing is people will come and try to give you a rose or give you a flower and they'll say that it's free I haven't quite figured out what it is that they're trying to do they may just be trying to guilt you into giving them money but I just emphatically say no and they are going to ask you multiple times so just continue to say no and be very forward with them just saying no you don't need to say no thank you you can put your hand up and just say no because they're pretty aggressive sometimes there are people in Minnesota Rocky Square who put a bracelet on your wrist um and they say it's free and then of course then they ask for payment I do think that some of those free scams are them trying to distract you and someone else may be trying to pickpocket you at the same time so like I said it's best to just be very forceful and say no and actually move away from that person obviously if they've come to your dinner table you can't move away from them but if you can physically move away from them you should if you're coming in the summer it's hot and you need to make sure that you're drinking a lot of water while you're here because the Mediterranean sun is super intense and you could get dehydrated really quickly so water is available a lot of places most commonly you're going to see these little kiosks on the street corners they sell everything they sell water they sell beer Coke wine candy um magazines newspapers all of those sorts of things so the little bottles of water that we all know are supposed to be no more than 50 cents at those kiosks uh it's a regulated thing so I haven't had it happen to me in a really long time where I've gone and they've said oh it's a Euro for this little bottle but it's just something that you want to be aware of another thing I want to make you aware of is that while the Metro is accessible there are escalators or elevators everywhere the streets the sidewalks are not necessarily what I would call accessible they are very narrow in some places and there'll be a tree there'll be a motorbike there'll be a car parked on the sidewalk they're not always flat a lot of them are really old and they're broken and they're cracked or tree limbs have knocked them up like this so if you have walking issues it's a problem if you're in a wheelchair it's even a bigger problem the other thing I will mention is that the sidewalks in sort of this really historic Center so sigtagma banister Rocky all of those places a lot of the sidewalks are made of marble so if you're here and it's raining it's very very slippery so you need to be careful I have even fallen in singtagma on the little marble curb because it was slightly wet and it's not the only time I've fallen here so if you have mobility issues if you're in a wheelchair think about that when you come think about budgeting for more taxi options so that way you can stay safe and not get hurt on your holiday the last thing and I always leave this last when I'm talking about it is that you cannot flush toilet paper in the toilets here in Greece and this is mostly true in Athens as well you might find that some of the larger more luxurious hotel chains have fixed that problem in their building but for the majority of Athens you cannot flush the toilet paper and you're thinking to yourself okay what do I do with it then there's always going to be a small trash can next to the toilet usually it has a lid and it's lined and so you just put it in there and that's it and if you're staying in a hotel don't worry the housekeeping staff is used to this we do it in our homes we do it in hotels and we do it in restaurants so it's not a big deal and they will come and take that every day now I want to hear from those of you who have been to Athens I want to know all the things that you think I should have mentioned or maybe I haven't thought of down in the comments below I would love to hear everybody's tips for Athens I hope you found this video helpful if you did I hope you'll consider hitting that subscribe button now coming up on the screen is another video that will help you plan your trip to Greece thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: A Girl and Her Passport

Views: 9,056

Keywords: Athens, Athens Greece, Expat, Expat life, Female travel, Greece, Solo travel, Travel, athens food, athens greece, athens greece travel, athens greece travel guide, athens guide, athens travel, athens travel guide, athens vlog, greece athens, greece travel, greece travel guide, greece travel tips, metro athens, travel advice, travel greece, travel tips, travel to greece, traveling to greece, travels, visit athens

Id: 1-jgJQgiZgo

Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2022