Athens travel tips

If you've bought your airline tickets for a holiday to Greece and you're trying to find the ultimate cultural experience in the Greek capital of Athens, here's a travel tip ... check out scheduled performances at the Odeon of Herod Atticus pictured below.

Construction of the Odeon began in 161BC and finished in 161AD. The Odeon was shaped as a theatre so it could cater for both theatrical and musical presentations... although the ancient architects probably weren't planning for a 2003 concert by Jethro Tull.

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Athens holiday tips

Nowadays the Odeon is one of the most important sites for cultural events in Athens and you should ensure it's in your holiday travel package when you buy your tickets to Greece.

Only the lower tier of the original seats remain but the theatre holds an audience as large as 5 thousand.

Numerous ancient and modern dramas are staged in the Herod Atticus Theatre, along with various Athens Festival concerts during summer which are a drawcard for many tourists wanting to holiday or travel in Greece.

As with most amphitheatres in Greece, the acoustics are superb.

Where else can you travel to enjoy drama in a theatre more than 2,000 years old?

Athens, the home of democracy and philosophy thanks to great thinkers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, is named after Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Thanks to the 2004 Olympic Games, Athens has been transformed as a holiday travel destination and now boasts brand new stadiums, roads, trains and tram systems.

The city has a new public transport infrastructure of subways linking to the airport, motorways, rail and tramways built for the Olympic Games.

This infrastructure has improved holiday travel through Athens and eased some of the city's notorious traffic jams with their resultant pollution.

In preparation for the 2004 Olympics, authorities built 120km of new roads, 40 new flyovers and a 24km tram network that stretches from the central city to the waterfront.

While digging massive tunnels for the new metro, engineers unearthed vast numbers of ancient relics which have either been placed in museums or in displays at the new metro stations.

The stations themselves have mostly been built within easy reach of ancient and cultural sites that you'll probably want to see during your holiday.

Look deeper into Athens and you'll find a cultural hive in what was once dubbed the "Paris of the Mediterranean".

Outdoor cafes line the streets of Athens and there are plenty of thoroughfares barred to vehicles. Parks and gardens are generally in short supply throughout the city.

Much of the maze of concrete apartment blocks was built in 1923 when the Treaty of Lausanne demanded a population exchange between Greece and Turkey that saw well over a million immigrants virtually double the population of Athens.

The apartments in Athens were a quick and cheap way to house the newcomers.

Athens covers 39 square kilometres and is fringed on three sides by small mountains and on the fourth by the waters of the Saronic Gulf.

The locals in Greece do what they can to cater for tourists enjoying a vacation - for example, a majority of streets are signposted in both Greek and English to help guide you through the cities and towns.

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Almost 5 million people live in the capital of Greece and if you try to go anywhere in the city during your holiday you're liable to bump into most of them. Greeks are very sociable people.

Athens is effectively built around the rocky outcrop of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, which sit high in the air atop Mt Lycabettus and can be seen from just about everywhere in the city.

The Parthenon was built between 447 and 437 BC and is the birthplace of global democracy in Greece.

The Parthenon is a tourist attraction visited by more than a million people each year, meaning you must share its splendour with an average 3,000 other tourists on any day you visit.

In other words, expect a queue.

A less crowded alternative on the north-east slope of the Acropolis is the ancient Agora marketplace complex, which dates back to the 6th Century BC and boasts monuments such as the 500BC Doric temple Hephaistion, the nearby 200BC Stoa of Attalos, the Sanctuary of Zeus and Hadrian's Arch.

Other sites worth visiting on the lower levels of the Acropolis are the Odium of Herodes, a steep-sloped amphitheatre with a capacity for 5,000, and the Theatre of Dionysos, the first stone theatre ever built and the home of Greek tragedy with capacity for up to 17,000 people.

For 12 euros (2008), a single ticket can allow tourist entry to see the Acropolis, Theatre of Dionysos, Ancient Agora and the Temple of Zeus.

Athens, which is the oldest inhabited city on earth, began as a small fortified village around 3000 BC and was originally called Kekropia.

The goddess Athena later won the city in a competition with the sea god Poseidon and hence Athens has borne her name.

Athens grew into one of the most powerful city-states of the ancient world, its notable residents including Socrates, Plato, Sophocles and Euripides.

Believe it or not, the Olympic City declined so much during its rule by the Byzantines and Turks that by the time Athens was declared the capital of the newly liberated state of Greece in 1834, it had a population of just 12,000.

Most of these people lived in the ancient village of Plaka, the remains of which are nestled into the north-east slope of Acropolis.

The Plaka spreads out from the base of the Acropolis. It provides an escape from the traffic congestion - as long as you don't mind the area's tourist ambience.

The Plaka has a myriad narrow streets adjoining the equally ancient Agora (marketplace) and this area is the most popular tourist attraction in Athens for visitors on a cheap holiday travel budget. Recommended tavernas for great food in the Plaka include Papandreou (within the Central Athinas Market), Thanassis (60 Mitropoleos St), Byzantino (18 Kidathineon St), Psaras (16 Kidathineon St), Stoa Tou Vangeli (63 Evripidou St), Diporto (9 Sokratous St) and 48 The Restaurant (48 Armatolon St).

Also bordering the Agora is an alternative cheap travel district, Monastiraki, which is home to a giant flea market and plenty of great coffee shops.

If your Greece holiday package doesn't include hotel bookings, most tourists can find cheap to expensive hotel accommodation in the Plaka district of Athens. If you look at your map of Athens, you'll find most items and services of interest surround the small Plateia Syntagmatos (Syntagma Square).

The Monastiraki markets and the Psiri nightlife district are just a short stroll from the Plaka district. Diners and club-goers normally begin to flood into Psiri after 11pm.

Holiday travel prices have gone through the roof in Athens since the drachma was replaced by the euro.

A three star hotel room in the Plaka will usually be priced around US$175 per night. International hotel chains further from the Athens city centre are likely to cost around US$360 per night.

Eating and drinking have also become fairly expensive in Athens, where a cup of coffee can cost as much as US$3.20.

In early 2004, a Mythos beer in the Plaka cost US$1.90 and US$12.50 for a bottle of Cretan red - about the same price for a plate of lamb or seafood.

Keep in mind that much of the restauarant cooking is superb and during your holiday travel you'll enjoy some of the most authentic, enjoyable Greek cuisine in the world.

A taxi fare from the airport is usually about US$29. Taxi drivers in Athens used to be notorious for ripping off tourists but a government crackdown on overcharging, vehicle quality and driver behaviour has forced them to clean up their act.

Giving a tip to the waiter or taxi driver during your travel in Greece is appreciated, but not de rigueur.

The risk of crime against tourists in Athens is about the same as most other cities in the world. This is particularly so as a result of the Olympic Games, with more than 1100 surveillance cameras deployed throughout the city.

Buy your airline tickets for a holiday in Greece during spring and late autumn when the weather is warm rather than hot, allowing plenty of comfortable sightseeing on foot. There are also less tourists crowding the museums, hotels and bars in Athens at this time of year.

But if you want the cheapest holiday travel packages to Greece, here's a tip... book your travel tickets for winter when both tourists and locals are hard to find and the weather is comfortably cool with just the occasional rainy day. Athens can be unbearably hot during summer.

The longer your holiday, the more the City of Athens will grow on you. Despite being noisy, dusty, messy and frustrating in some areas, Athens is fun and its numerous holiday tourist attractions provide fascinating adventures.

Rather than travel to Greece via the airlines, a popular way for Europeans to reach the capital of Greece is to drive or catch a bus or train to the coast of Italy and then a ferry to Greece.

As many as six ferries a day leave the port of Brindisi.

Athenians are a traditionally friendly people likely to invite you home for a meal, and this generous hospitality has become even more apparent as a result of the 2004 Olympic Games.

The people of Athens also like to party hard into the night and traffic jams are sometimes experienced before dawn.

If you're health-conscious, be aware that Athenians also like to smoke a lot of cigarettes.

Athens is a blend of the old and the new. As a result, some infrastructure might not be exactly what you'd expect in a modern city.

Despite the Olympic revamp, you'll still find many hotels have tiny lifts, ancient footpaths which are sometimes dangerously potholed, and a constant frenzy of motorcycles and scooters that dart unexpectedly in all directions.

Particularly with the rush of tourists after the 2004 Olympics, the streets of Athens can seem eternally congested and give a new definition to "adventure travel".

Travellers can easily get lost searching through the narrow side streets of Athens, but their travel is nevertheless flavoured by cheap outdoor markets, thousands of restaurants, taverns, cafes, Byzantine churches, courtyards, gardens and stunning ancient ruins in the most peculiar spots.

The maze of streets in Athens can be navigated by taking your bearings from the three famous squares (plateia) - Monastiraki, Omonia, and Syntagma (Constitution).

Syntagma Square (Plateia Syntagmatos) is where you'll find Parliament House and the renowned Grande Bretagne Hotel. A popular tourist attraction is the changing of the guard ceremony which occurs every hour at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier below the parliament building. Syntagma Square sits above a major metro rail station.

Omonia Square is more downmarket, although the area was spruced up for the Olympic Games.

Holiday nightlife in Athens includes numerous clubs, bars, open-air cinemas and theatres.

Athens shoppers can enjoy cheap flea markets or outrageously priced boutiques.

The numerous cosmopolitan restaurants of Athens see most people eating lunch around 2pm and dinner usually starts around 9pm or 10pm.

Many Athens merchants shut their doors during the afternoon to rest from the at-times stifling heat of summer, but most re-open around 6pm and stay open till late at night.

Food in Greece became much more expensive following the introduction of the euro.

If you travel to Greece, tourist attractions you simply have to visit during your holiday in Athens include the Acropolis museum, the Acropolis itself, the Temple of Athena Nike, the Proplaea, the Theatre of Herod Atticus, the National Archaeological Museum and the museum of Keramikos.

Away from Athens, the air is cleaner and cheap travel is a little easier.

Popular day trips from Athens include Delphi (numerous antiquities and spectacular views), Hydra (nowadays a haven for artists), Eleusis, Mycenae, Poseidon and Marathon.

Ferry trips to and from the numerous islands of the Saronic Gulf are relatively cheap and they mostly provide a tranquil escape from the overcrowded clutter of Athens. Faster island trips can be enjoyed on hydrofoils known as The Flying Dolphins.

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