Athens-how far have you gone in it?
 

Hello to all who have travelled or are about to travel to Athens!!
I am a university student of tourism management and i would like to know, your impressions of our city, what you loved or hated about it, how long you stayed here, what you regretted that you didn't do, did you visit the suburbs, would you like to come back again in the future? Which are your complaints and what are you most careful/demanding at when you visit a place? What did you love best here?
I think all these would be interesting to talk about!!! thank you and yasas

Last summer I went for the very first time. I travelled with a group of students and we all loved Athens. We were on an organized tour so we mostly did all the touristy stuff: The Acropolis, the Plaka, city tour by bus, some of the Olympic sites and the meat market area. Your subway is beautiful and very efficient.


The food was fabulous and the Athenians were very, very friendly. Whenever we got lost people were quite willing to help us. My wife and I found a great little Gyro shop near our hotel - delicious huge portions, cheap meals and very nice staff. We told the other people in our group about it. The next day 20 of us showed-up at this tiny little stand. The folks working there ran down the street to their neighbors' businesses and homes to borrow lawn and folding chairs for our group.

We enjoyed Athens so much we are returning this summer. I hope to see more of the real city this time - not just tourist sites. I want to go to the top of that other big mountain in Athens (don't remember the name). Is there a way to get there easily?

I am glad you seem pleased by your trip to Athens and i am sure the staff at the Gyros shop were very happy to see you even if it was a surprise!!
The mountain you are talking about is it a real mountain (like Immitos) or you mean the Lycabbetus hill in the centre of the city?!
Apart from this what did you expect to see during your trip? Athens has developed much during the last years, large shopping centres,cinemas, parks and all that could make you have a good time, but maybe forget that you are in Greece. Maybe we are going through the new era, classical Greece is a bit left behind. I wonder if tourists can feel this and if it would eventually be proved to be beneficial for tourism in Greece. Do you have a personal opinion upon this?
And by the way, thanks for your reply!!

I've been to Athens three times and will be back in October on a cruise, so it will be just for the day. I plan to re-vist the acropolis, the plaka, the market (love the market!), and a few other sights. I find the locals very friendly and helpful. I might take a walking tour but haven't started my research yet for a tour guide.

Best wishes to you with your schooling.

Monica ((F))

Hello Monica and thank you for your wishes and good comments!I am glad that so far i haven't heard something bad!

A day tour can't include much but at least you will remember how the places you visited last look, have a cold frape in the morning and a souvlaki later on. Ofcourse i would suggest you to try some more of the greek cuisine if you haven't already and visit a restaurant serving a large variety of mezedes. If you ask i am sure, not hard to find!
And anothet good option for you coming to Athens is a visit to Nafplio which is actually my favourite -most beautiful-city and even the whole area of Argolis is rather interesting, full of archaeological sites! Maybe you can do that another time, when you'll have a couple of days to spend in the area.
Whatever you do plan your holiday very well and be careful of unpleasant surprises (such as being overcharged)!
Unfortunatelly everyplace there are people who don't do their job with full conscience.
Have a great holiday!! Welcome and hope you enjoy yourself :-)

My brother lived in Raffina (is that right) for two years back in the early 80's. I went to visit him for 2 weeks and absolutely fell in love with Greece. Athens was dirty dusty but wonderful. When I first saw the Acropolis I actually started crying. Totally unexpected. But my all time favorite place in Greece is Sunion. Beautiful.

I spent 3 days in Athens in mid-April.

I really liked: The Acropolis (even if there were lots of tourists and lots of scaffolding, it is still awe-inspring). The friendly and helpful people we met everywhere. The metro, which was efficient, clean, and easy to use. The afternoon trip we took out to Cap Sounion. The national archeological museum. The generally low prices, compared to France where I live.

I was disappointed by: Our hotel (the Astor), which had told us that our room had a view of the Acropolis, but upon arrival we learned that every floor of the hotel with Acropolis views had been closed for renovation weeks before we made the reservation. The Plaka, which is every bit as junky as I remembered from the last time. The Greek National Tourist Office, which very cheerfully provided wrong answers to just about every question I asked them.

Hello Sharon!
Yes Raffina is the place and it is in the outskirt of the city. Surely Athens of 80's has nothing to do with Athens of today! The city is lets say reborn! A part of the centre is still a little bit dirty(some neighbourhoods)mostly in places where refugees from Asia, Africa or poor Greek citizens live. I think one should try for sure the suburbs of Athens, it's worth to see a little more than the basic usual stuff, isn't it?
Anyway, i am glad you liked it and i wish you to have the chance to travel here soon again, so that you can see the rest! Thanks for your reply and welcome!

Hello mlaffitte!
I am glad you answered both good and bad views of your holiday. You know knowing about bad parts can help us in becoming better!
I don't know under which circumstances you booked your hotel room (via travel agency or by call directly?), if you talked to an employee when you booked and they told you that, then it is surely their fault. If it was through travel agency it might be a misunderstanding between hotel and agency.
As it comes to Plaka, i guess that is a matter of taste, because there are people who like it and people who don't. Perhaps when you went it was too crowded too. Myself i hate it when there are too many people around, i can't enjoy a place. Like when i visited my fave town Nafplio during Easter time, it was packed with people and it seemed really not like the place i loved!
About the GNTO... you might think i try to cover up but i don't! You might be right, i don't doubt it. Still, i want to ask you to be a little understanding and i will tell you why. Here it goes: I decided to study about tourism because that is what i love since i was a teenager, still by getting a closer look of the profession somebody must have huge knowledge to practise it, because a tourist might ask you about anything he has in mind. Personally i think it will take me years to learn just the basic stuff and for sure when i start working in it, i will too make mistakes and probably tell people things that might be wrong. Lots of people are being trained now and during high season, i know that the stress is too much. Another time, maybe you can try asking another employee or try another source of information (like the internet, your hotel, a travel agency etc).
Anyway i am sorry for your incoveniences and i hope that this will not discourage you from visiting Greece again. Bad incidents can occur anyplace, i think we all have the mood to make up for them, as you said we are as helpful as we can to tourists(we;people) :-)

Best regards!

Regarding your question on the hotel, I booked directly with the hotel. When we checked in, the desk clerk said the room we had booked was "occupied" so we would have to take another room. Only later did we find out that he was not telling the truth. All the upper floors were under construction, and none of the rooms there were occupied.

As for the GNTO, I am sorry to say that they need a LOT of training. I phoned them because a friend had told me I could catch a bus to Sounion at a bus stop near Syntagma, but I wasn't sure where the bus stop was. The GNTO said there was no bus stop at Syntagma. They told me to go to Victoria, which they said was a train station rather than a metro station (wrong: as I'm sure you know, and as I could easily tell from looking at my map, it is a metro station). Then they told me to walk to an address near Victoria to catch the bus. (wrong again: when I got to the address, there was no bus stop, and after asking a couple of people I found out it was about 2 blocks away). When we finally caught the bus, it drove right past Syntagma and stopped at a bus stop there -- even though the GNTO had told me there was no stop!

About the hotel, i am sure it was their fault then. I guess they didn't want to lose a customer, so they tried to cover up the fact they didn't have a room with a view to the Acropolis.

About GNTO, one thing i should let you know is that we Athenians don't regard Viktoria as metro station(although it is a part of the metro nowadays) and that because Viktoria belongs to ÇÓÁÐ which is the old version of local train in Athens. So in this i think the employee just replied you spontaneously. She didn't know you have no idea about what Viktoria used to be and is. Even me i don't regard it as metro station but as train station(the difference is that it is the wagons are different and travel on the ground-unlike metro). Now about Syntagma stop they were obviously wrong! They probably didn't check it well.

I loved my visit to Athens with my daughter in March two years ago. The weather was beautiful, and I know we were lucky because of that. The area around the Acropolis and the ancient Agora is wonderful with the pedestrianized streets running around the area and outdoor cafes.

I really liked the presence of music throughout the city. Everywhere we went out to eat had live music. We enjoyed rembetika at the Stoa Athanaton in the central market. I believe we were the only non-Greeks there, and we did feel a little bit like we didn't know how to act, but we had a good time.

The atmosphere in the evening with people all in the streets late at night in the Psiri neighborhood was fun.

One thing that did bother us a bit both in Athens and elsewhere in Greece was the shops. When we wandered around shopping, the shopkeepers sometimes followed us and continually picked up things to show us and ask if we liked them. It was somewhat off-putting and we left stores that we might have bought things in because this made us uncomfortable.

I loved the souvlaki stands outside the Monastiraki metro stop. The best and most inexpensive street food I've had in a long time.

Nikoleta....I am planning to visit your country in a few weeks and I am really looking forward to it.
Good luck with your studies of tourism management. I'm sure you will do very well.

Hello Nikki,
thanks for your reply! I even feel bothered when i go to a shop and the assistant comes and asks me more than once "hello, would you like some help?" and from my personal experience i know that this discourages many customers from buying! Well, now why they do it, maybe they are bored sitting their allday and they find a way to comunicate with you(this is the only reason i would do it) or they are not aware of what i just mentioned before... As for souvlaki i have very strong feeling for it, it is a matter of life bond between us! Hehe.
Anyway welcome again anytime you plan to visit!

Thank you suntravler for your wishes,
I guess i have an advantage in studying tourism and that is my love for the profession. It was my 1st choice when i picked the number of universities, unlike most of the people who left it as an alternative. I think this is what makes me different and the fact that i always support the tourist when he is right and do not try to cover up things!
Welcome to Athens, may you have a great time here :-)

Nikoleta,

You said the GNTO employee answered "spontaneously" and "had no idea you didn't know what Viktoria used to be." Excuse me, but why on earth would you expect a foreign tourist to be familiar with the history of Athens public transit? More to the point, why doesn't GNTO do what modern, well-managed tourist offices do: Set up a computer database or a frequently-updated notebook where their personnel can quickly find answers to common tourist questions, rather than just answering with whatever pops into their heads?

I love Athens and have visited many times on the way to and from Corfu. I have stayed at the Arethusa Hotel 3 times, the Attalos 1 time and the Athens Gate 3 times. I love the Plaka area for wandering around and have visited most of the main tourist sights. We had one very bad experience with car hire from Avis at Athens airport - faulty breaks. We have toured a lot of the mainland and have visited many beautiful places. Some of my favourites are Nafplio, Finikounda, Delphi, Galaxidi and Ioninna. Greece really needs to have some of the cheap European airlines flying into the regional airports. This would be of great benefit for tourism in the country as a whole. From the UK, you can only get cheap flights to Athens with Easyjet, whereas you can get cheap flights to many airports in France, Spain, Italy etc. I would love to see one of the cheap airlines flying to some of the islands or to less well known airports, like Ioannina or Preveza. It costs so much more to fly to Greece than to one of the other south European countries that Greece just won't attract as many first time visitors.
Hope you do well in your studies Nikoleta, I'm off to Corfu next week so will be back in beautiful Greece.

Carolena

Hi, I went to Athens for 4 days with my then 13 year old son.

We had a great time and really enjoyed the sites and food, and found the people very friendly. We did many of the typical tourist things.

The best bits: going to the Acropolis nice and early in the morning by the Metro, then walking all the way up the track, starting from the little villagey area at the bottom. Hot work (glad we'd taken plenty of water) but very interesting - we saw people arriving by coach right by the top and knew they'd missed out on so much. We were also amused by a local primary school party whose teacher had created a huge loop of rope and made all the kids stay inside it to keep them all together! The Acropolis itself was fascinating. It also made a wonderful background view in the evenings.

The Archaeological Museum - we spent virtually a whole day there.

Lycabbetus Hill - a lovely retreat from all the hustle and bustle. We took the furnicular up and walked down through the woods. The only bad part was our taxi ride there...while we were in the car the driver picked up a Greek granny with a parcel, drove us right out of our way to deliver her parcel, dropped her back where she started, and then charged us for the whole journey! He wouldn't even take us right to the hill but dropped us nearby saying that cars were not permitted to near the furnicular, which was a lie as we saw cabs right outside it. This was our only cab journey in the whole visit and it left a sour taste in our mouths (although the granny bit does make quite a funny anecdote).

Oh, and at one point we were walking round some quiet back streets in the evening and saw a couple of trucks unloading armed police into the street. Found this quite worrying and headed in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.

Nona, your story about the police reminds me of something that happened when I was in Athens last month. A protest march (about education policy, we were told) was scheduled on the last afternoon of our visit,. All the streets and the public gardens near Syntagma were closed for several hours, and riot police were stationed throughout the area and on rooftops overlooking the square. Funny thing was, the protest march was minuscule, the police far outnumbered the protesters, and it was all over in maybe 15 minutes with no violence, just a couple hundred people chanting and carrying signs. My 11-year-son got quite a kick out of seeing all the police in full riot regalia, said some of them reminded him of the Terminator.