I've been told by the owner of the house we are renting (on the Corinthian Pennisula) in Porto Germeno, that driving to and in Athens is "easy". I'm feeling queasy about it.... any insights? I can't find a decent/usable map of the Athens Metro or a train schedule (to park and ride). Thanks for any insights.

There's an excellent map of Attica's public transport and motorway system at http://tinyurl.co.uk/0kii.

For metro timetables, just go to the Attiko Metro site. Oddly, the public transport section of the Athens airport website has a pretty good set of links to other bits of the region's transport system.

Personally, I'd agree with the owner.

heartfelt thanks! We leave Thursday morning and I want to have everything printed and ready for reference before we leave. We are staying not too far from Elesfina - I note that there is a train track (looks like) that runs there. Maybe we'll catch the train into town for the day. Train rides are fun and pretty heavy on culture as well! Thanks again

Some bits of train or metro systems - like the Louvre station in Paris - have some culture about them.

But nothing on (or more relevantly, under) this earth comes anywhere close to rivalling the Acropolis station on the Athens system. Obviously, if you're going to tunnel under the Acropolis to build a metro line, you'll stumble over a few archaeological remain. Well, more than a few of course.

So a tiny proportion of what they've found (adding up to more than the entire content of most museums) is displayed around the station.

It's a depressing commentary on most people's lack of curiosity that hardly a single tourist seemed to look at this astonishing cornucopia - or the fascinating explanations - when I was last passing through.

Don't be among them.

Great insights - we'll check it out! It is supposed to be wonderful weather so I am hoping to not spend too much time underground!

UPDATE: Well, we missed our turn off for the Metro station and ended up driving to downtown Athens - found a parking spot right away next to the Flea Market - what an answer to prayer! Lots of VERY tight streets with very limited parking.... We felt blessed but would encourage anyone else to not do it that way!