Athens transport guides
I spend enough hours stuck in traffic every week to be confident that renting a car in Athens is unnecessary. In a lot of cases it’s actively a bad idea. The traffic is absurd, the driving is worse, and parking regularly takes longer than the drive. What’s strange is how little comes back in return….
Mobile data is the first thing worth sorting after landing, since maps, taxi apps, transport tickets, and translation all depend on it. The airport makes buying a SIM card look easy, but that convenience usually comes with a much higher price. I’ve used Cosmote, Vodafone, and Nova over the years and been irritated by all…
Taxis are everywhere in Athens. Yellow, easy to spot, constantly moving through the city, and the single most common source of bad transport stories. Locals don’t entirely trust them either, which tells its own story. That isn’t to say every driver is a problem, since most are completely fine. But inflated fares, pointless detours, careless…
Athens is a city of 3.5 million, but moving around it is easier than that number suggests. Once the historic centre is reached, most of it is walkable. For everything beyond, there’s a modern metro, buses, trams, taxis, and a few other options of varying usefulness. Some of those work very well. Others create more…
If you’re flying into Athens, your first interaction with Greece will not be the Acropolis, but rather the Eleftherios Venizelos international Airport. And whether your first impression of the country is calm and efficient, or chaotic and overpriced, depends almost entirely on what you do in the first 60 minutes after landing. I’m going to…