So you finally managed to get to Athens, but how does one get around Athens? Well, that’s what we’re trying to answer in this article.

1. Getting Around Athens By Metro

This is probably the best way to get around Athens. The metro is clean, cheap and fast. To use the metro, all you need to do is buy a ticket at the metro station, where they also have automatic ticket machines, validate it when entering so you won’t get a fine and the keep it with you as long as you’re using the metro.

You can also take the metro all the way to the port of Piraeus. If you do that, the metro will eventually come up to the surface near Agora and you may catch a nice view of the Acropolis.

Another particular and interesting thing about the Athens metro is that some stations have small museums built inside them. Such is the case with the Syntagma station and Acropolis station where one can enjoy artefacts found in subway excavations.

One thing to beware in the metro, as anywhere else in the world, is pickpocketing. Keep an eye and at least a hand on your pockets.

2. Getting Around Athens By Car (Plus Athens Car Hire Services)

Getting a car and driving it through Athens is a pain in the you-know-what. However, if you still want to do it we can offer you some tips on how to best handle this. For example, in case you use an Athens car hire service and get your car from the airport you risk paying an expensive overcharge. However, if you plan to rent one it is best to do that from abroad, before reaching Athens. This way you’ll get a much better rate. All you need to do is use a specialized site or give an e-mail or phone call to one of the major international companies that operate in the car hiring field that have offices at the Eleftherios Venizelos airport such as Avis, Budget, Hertz, etc.

Another tip would be to take full insurance and ask the Athens car hire agency a couple of times whether the cost includes absolutely everything you must pay.

3. Getting Around Athens By Bus

Athens’ bus service is cheap and unreliable. Even though you could practically reach any point in Athens by bus, it is a huge hassle to find out which bus you need to take to reach a certain destination. On top of that, most buses are overcrowded and they often change routes to avoid excessive overlapping with new metro stations.

You can ask more about the Athens bus system by calling the information desk at 210-185.

The cost of a ticket is about half an Euro and you can get them at kiosks spread all around Athens. Once you get on a bus, you’ll have to validate the ticket otherwise you’ll risk a fine running anywhere from 5 Euros to 20 Euros.

One thing to note is that routes #60 and #150 are routes that serve the commercial area of Athens right in the center of it free of charge.

4. Getting Around Athens By Taxi

Most taxi drivers in Athens are by all means honest and will try their best to give you a comfortable ride through the chaos developing on the streets of Athens. However, you should be wary of taxi drivers from certain parts of the city that are more touristy, such as the Piraeus port, the Eleftherios Venizelos airport and other such areas as they might try to overcharge you.

Taxi fares are also inexpensive. Whenever you get into a taxi you must check the meter. It needs to be set on 1. If it is set on 2, it means the taxi will charge you double and that’s only allowed from midnight to 5 in the morning or if you take a ride outside city limits. There’s also a small tax of 2 Euros for servicing a port, airport, rail or bus station as well as a luggage tax or half an Euro per 10 kilos. These are 2009 prices.

In case the taxi driver picks up other people on the way you shouldn’t worry because he’ll figure out a way to honestly split the charge fairly between you all.

5. Getting Around Athens By Foot

Getting around Athens by foot is very easy and very relaxing. That’s if you can withstand the high temperatures in case you visit Athens during summer, of course. Most of the things you need to see are in the center and close to each other anyway. Monastiraki, Plaka, Psiri, Syntagma, Ermou Street, Omonia and the Acropolis are all one next to the other. The one thing you need to look after are scooters and motorcycles whose drivers often bend traffic rules in their favor so they’d save some time.

This concludes our article on getting around Athens. Hopefully this has been at least a bit helpful to you and we always appreciate comments containing new tips and suggestions on how to get around Athens.

Partner: Alquiler de coches provides all kinds of cars to people who want to hire. People looking to hire a car for a business trip or for holiday trip, can choose cars from a range of varieties based on your requirements.

There are various ways you can get to Athens and we’ll try to cover all of them here.

1. How To Get To Athens By Air

How? With a plane! Dry jokes aside, you can get to Athens’ Eleftherios Venizelos airport from all the major airports in the world using the classic and expensive carriers or you could try a low-cost solution and cut on passenger and luggage space in order to get to Athens much cheaper. Of course, such a solution would only be possible on shorter routes such as flights connecting other parts of Europe with Athens. It would be useful if you could know when you’d like to get to Athens a couple of months in advance because that’s when flight tickets to Athens can be booked cheaply. Generally, a carrier has a limited number of very cheap tickets and once those are sold up the price bracket raises and so on and so forth until you pay way too much on a plane fare.

It can also be useful to search for cheap flights to Athens through travel agents.

2. How To Get To Athens By Ferry

If you use a ferry to get the Athens you will reach Piraeus, which is Athens’ main port and is a short 15 metro ride from central places such as Monastiraki, Syntagma or Omonia square. Another option to reach Athens from Piraeus would be to take bus 040 but since the metro is fast, clean and cheap I don’t see why you may want to do that.

There are also ferryboats that stop at the port of Rafina, which is slightly farther than Piraeus. There’s a bus station there with frequent rides to Athens. You’ll drop off in Athens at the Areos Park Terminal which is fairly close to Victoria Square.

There are ferries reaching Greece from other countries regularly. Most of them run from Brindisi, Bari and Ancona to Athens. The best of them is the ferry from Brindisi which is also the shortest of the bunch in distance traveled and at times it even runs for up to 6 times a day. However, these don’t always reach Athens so check their route in advance.

If you’d like to book a ferry to Athens from another destination you can do that online using a site such as aferry.co.uk.

3. How To Get To Athens By Train

Trains in Athens arrive either at the Larissa station or the Peloponnese station depending on the region they come from. For example, trains coming from northern regions of the country arrive at Larissa station while trains coming from southern and western regions as well as European trains arrive at Peloponnese station. Luggage storage and money exchange are both available at Larissa station.

Once at the Larissa station, you can get bus 1 to get to Syntagma or Omonia square. As for the other way around, you can get train tickets from ticket offices in Omonia square, Syntagma square or through any of the many travel agencies spread through the city.

If you’re planning on using the train to visit more than one European country or if you’re coming to Athens and Greece by train from another European country, it’s best to get an European rail pass on the Internet for more convenience and maybe even for saving some money.

4. How To Get To Athens By Car

There are two main entrances into Athens if you travel by car. One of them is from the north from Thessaloniki. This one is quite poorly marked with orientation signs and might prove confusing for the visitor to reach exactly the place that they want in Athens. It’s best to slowly follow along until one finds the best way to reach one’s precise destination. And there’s also an entrance from the southwest that is fairly well marked and if you follow the signs you’ll eventually reach Omonia square in central Athens.

5. How To Get To Athens By Bus

The national bus company of Greece is called KTEL and there are two main bus terminals for it inside Athens, terminals you may end up at once you get to Athens by bus. One of the terminals is located on Liossion Street 260 and links Athens with central, eastern and northern areas of Greece. You can use bus 24 to get from there to a central location such as Syntagma Square or the other way around, from Syntagma Square to reach the bus terminal. And there’s also another bus terminal that connects Athens with the Peloponnese and some parts of northern Greece. This one is located on Kifissou Avenue 100 and you can get there or out of there using bus 51 that gets quite close to Omonia Square.

This concludes our article on how to get to Athens. If you have anything useful to add on top of our effort related to getting to Athens, don’t hesitate to post it below as a comment.

Partner: For a quick and easy way to find cheap holidays to Greece, you should try Deal Checker.

As with every other major city in the world, Athens has some bad sides as well. Here are a couple of things to avoid in Athens.

1. Omonia Square at night

Omonia Square, although one of the oldest squares in Athens, is known to become a place infested with junkies, drug dealers, prostitutes and transexuals at night. Some of the individuals belonging to these groups might become violent to strangers. Unless you want to deal with such people, it is best to stay away.

2. Avoid large crowds in Athens

Really! This goes for metros as well. If you’re in an overcrowded Athens metro train, watch out for your pockets at all times. Thiefs usually gently bump you with their body before the train stops and next thing you know you’re all alone in the station with no wallet while the thief is still in the train and get out at the next station. Better not carry a wallet and have all your belongings spread between the various pockets of your pants. It’s also good to have both a passport and a national ID card as well as copies of them with you.

3. Avoid getting ripped off by taxi drivers

This one’s easy. If during the day, the meter must be set on 1. If between midnight and 5 AM or if you’re taking the taxi outside the city then the meter will be set on 2, which means double fare.

4. Avoid driving and buses

Avoid driving in Athens because congestion problems are awful and parking spaces are very scarce. As for buses, avoid them if you can take the metro or a walk instead because they are overcrowded, they don’t run on a strict schedule and you may end up waiting and waiting and waiting in the station.

5. Avoid throwing paper down the toilet

This is because the sewage system in Athens uses narrow pipes that can easily become congested so you run the risk of blocking the pipes and flooding the bath. Just use the plastic bins next to the toilet seats instead.

This concludes our article. I’m sure there are more things to avoid in Athens but I thought these are some of the more pressing of them. You are free to post other things to avoid in Athens in the comments below so that future visitors reading this can have the trip of their life.

So you’d like to do some shopping in Athens? Well, there are some important areas in the city where you can do just that. Here we go.

The biggest shopping street in Athens is Ermou street. On Ermou street one can find both shops of local brands as well as shops of international brands. There are also a couple of quality souvenir shops in there as well. Ermou used to be a trafficked street in the past but it was closed and it is now pedestrian-only. It runs off Syntagma square so if you’d like to get to it it’s best to take the metro to Syntagma.

If you’d like to buy some souvenirs from Athens the best way to do that would be to take the metro to Monastiraki and then roam the adjacent area. Actually, both the Plaka district and the Monastiraki district are full of souvenir shops. Don’t be afraid to negotiate on price with the salesmen.

Kolonaki, a district of central Athens, in another area of note when it comes to shopping in Athens. This wealthy area is close to Syntagma square and houses some of the most important high-end stores in Athens. One street in particular, Voukourestiou Street, is well known for its jewelry while Tsakalof Street is the district’s most famous and one of the most expensive streets in the world. Not exactly what you were interesting to hear on a Cheap Athens Travel site but it’s good to know nonetheless. You can reach Kolonaki by metro, stopping at either the Evangelismos or the Megaro Mousikis station.

What else? Well, the best periods to find stuff on sale in Athens are at the end of summer and beginning of autumn and at the start of the year. That’s when you can get some new clothes on the cheap or whatever else you’d like.

Other shopping areas of note where one can find bargains are Eolou and Agiou Marou streets. If you’re up north, the main shopping street is Kifissia and if you’re on the coast in Glyfada district the main shopping street is Glyfada.

Another good tip would be not to bring travelers checks because Greek banks will charge you a hefty fee for accepting them. Also, be wary that although exchange rates at banks are better than rates at exchange offices, they do charge a fee on top of the rate. Always double check and ask around to find a decent exchange rate. Other than that, it’s useful to know that you can get a refund on VAT (18% at the time of writing) on sales over 120 EUR if you’re from outside the European Union. If this applies to you, do enquire about this at the shop you’re buying from. You can find more on this on GlobalRefund.com.

As for credit and debit cards, Visa and Mastercard are by far the most popular, followed by American Express at a large distance. Diners is close to nonexistent. However, you may want to back up on cash from home because in Greece, compared to other developed countries, cash is used in a larger percentage of transactions compared to cards and not all merchants accept cards. The card is good though for withdrawing from an ATM and as backup.

This concludes our articles on shopping in Athens. If there’s anything else you’d like to add to our effort don’t hesitate to do that below in the comments.

Sponsor: Holidays To Greece – Going to Greece? Find cheap holidays to Greece at BeatTheBrochure.