Athens

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Places to Stay

If you go to Athens try find a room in Plaka. It is a safe and charming area of town with easy access to all of the sites a well as the subway.

The camp sites listed in the area are:

east coast out of Athens:
- 2 near Panteleimon - one a few km to the north, and one directly to the south
- 1 between Mati and Rafina, and another directly south of Rafina
All of these look like they're directly on the beach, or very close to it. You can get a bus into Athens from that area, it shouldn't take more than an hour depending on the traffic.

west coast out of Athens:
- nothing! Piraues is wall-to-wall resorts, so maybe the camping's have been squeezed out.

Things to Do

Athens is loud and dirty, but is worth allocating a few days including one to see the archaeological museum

The food is wonderful, the beaches are beautiful but Athens is GROSS! Not to mention Greek trains do indeed leave something to be desired.

Spend a day, two days maximum, before going to Piraeus and taking a boat to one of the Islands.

Trip Report - Mouse~

We're just back from our Greece trip, so I wanted to write a quick trip report before I'd forgot all the details for others who might be planning to go. Keep in mind while reading this that our trip was an archaeological and camping/hiking trip primarily at mainland sites, rather than the typical island resort trip, and use the info found herein accordingly.

I found the super-touristy aspect of the regions around the major archaeological sites quite shocking, which is a bit silly really - they've been tourist destinations for something like a thousand years now, so why should I find it surprising? Still, I thought it would be a bit more like what we'd found in Italy, where we found it relatively easy to find less developed areas within 20-30 km of the main sites (although to be honest neither of us have been in mainland Italy but only Sardinia, which isn't such a tourist hub yet). It's hard to find fault with the Greek tourist machine since Greece desperately needs the development and tourist euros, but it's still not necessarily how I would choose to spend my holiday. Regardless, we had a fantastic holiday, and managed to work around the more commercialized areas to find ourselves a good time.

Days 1-3:

When we flew in we stayed the night at a hotel just outside Piraeus that we booked from the airport - it was quite expensive but it was late and we were tired and didn't want to drive into Athens that time of night to find a cheaper place. A good rule of thumb around larger cities in coastal Greece is that hotels on the outskirts can be expensive, and you'll find better deals in town. Now that we've driven in Athens a bit we would just go into town to find something cheap on a subsequent trip, but for new arrivals I'd recommend just splashing out for the first night for a stress-free first-night's sleep. In the morning we drove to Corinth and found a pretty nice beachside campsite just south of the main town, where we stayed for the next two nights. It was incredibly quiet there, and in fact most other places we went - there were only a couple of other people at the campsite besides us. Once we'd got settled we drove back to Corinth where we went through the museum and then wandered around the ruins. (Throughout the trip we saw lots of people just heading straight for the ruins, but I'd suggest that travellers go through the site museums (where they exist) first - doing so gave me a much better idea of the ancient use of the sites and the relationships of the structures.) The museum gave an excellent overview of the history of the site, but the objects on display were a bit of a mish-mash. The ruins were fantastic though, well worth an hour or two to wander around.

Next day we drove down to Mycenae. These ruins really are in a spectacular location - when you climb to the top you get a fantastic overview of the rugged hills all around. We thought about going down to Argos as well afterwards, but in the end we headed back to camp for a swim, and got hammered on Metaxa on the beach. Not a bad way to end the day

Days 4-5:

We headed across the Peloponnese to see Olympia the next day. This really was a tourist madhouse, loads of tour groups, and to top it off the site museum was closed, so we had to rely on the on-site signposting and the dinky little map in our Lonely Planet to find our way about. The Temple of Zeus was very impressive - especially the massive columns flanking the side, lying so complete as if they'd just fallen - as was the racetrack. We also found a really nicely preserved large fragment of mosaic towards the right rear of the site just in front of the bathhouses - you kind of have to lean in towards the wall and peer over to see it. Keep an eye out for it if you happen to find yourself in Olympia.

We'd planned on camping in that area but as it was so busy we decided instead to head north so we'd be closer to the ferry to the mainland the next day. We found a cheap room in K. Achaia, on the northwest coast, and had a nice walk around the town before settling down for beers at a taverna. (Two things about tavernas: first, if you prefer to have beer you'll find your choice pretty much limited to Amstel and Heineken, although very infrequently we also came across Kaisser and Mythos. Second, you'll get better prices and a much better ambience if you choose the tavernas mainly populated by little old men. We found all our favorite places that way.)

Early the next morning we drove into Rio on the north coast and caught the ferry over to the mainland. The ferry was amazing - they employ loads of men whose only purpose is to pack the cars in as tightly as possible, so the front line of cars at any given time were making these constant little back-and-forth movements while the parking helpers shouted out instructions in Greek, German, English and Italian. One poor old woman in the car ahead of ours had to wriggle out the window to get up on the main deck for the trip; her husband just stayed trapped in his car. Ferry took about 20 minutes, then we had a beautiful drive along the southern and southwestern coast while we headed for the island of Lefkada, stopping for sandwiches in Messolongi. (We made most of our lunches during this trip ourselves - usually bread, tomatoes and salt we'd bought at the market.) I quite liked Messolongi, the bits we saw were very pretty.

We'd mainly decided to go to Lefkada on the recommendation of a Greek man we'd met at dinner one night, who highly recommended staying in the village of Nidri, but while it's definitely an area of great natural beauty, it was also literally stuffed with tourists, and Nidri and nearby villages seemed a bit too commercialized for our taste. So, we headed back north a little ways and ended up getting a great little room in Ligia, where we had sofrito for dinner (my new favorite food) and got hammered on Metaxa on our balcony. We're great fans of the stuff, if you hadn't noticed

Day 6-7:

Left Ligia early and headed north to Ioannina, where we found a campsite on the lakeshore just on the outskirts of town, amazingly enough, where we stayed for two days. It was a great location, as we could walk into the old town in about 20 minutes so we didn't have to try to find parking. Walked through the old town - a fantastic oasis of quiet and calm in the middle of that chaotic city - and went through the Byzantine museum, which was very well laid out and had some wonderful iconography.

The next day was probably the single most disappointing travelling day in all the travels that either of us have ever taken. Early that morning we tried to visit the archaeological museum, but it was closed for repairs - the entire building was gutted, actually, so it must have been closed for most of the year. So we struck out north towards Vikos, where we hoped to hike through a beautiful gorge. The drive itself was lovely, and we did manage to walk just down the slope towards the gorge enough to actually see it, but then a storm rolled in and we'd barely made it back to our car before it cut loose. Had to hang out in the car for an hour waiting for the rain to let up - we'd have never made it back on those roads otherwise - then headed forlornly back to our campsite. At least we got to see a bit of the countryside up that way - Vikos is only 30 km or so from the Albanian border, and it was nice to get a feel for the terrain in that region. We'd been planning on cooking up a feast at camp to celebrate our last night in Ioannina but hadn't reckoned on early closing hours on Saturday, so by the time we'd made it back all the shops were closed, and we could buy neither dinner for that evening nor breakfast and lunch for the next day. We did manage to find an open restaurant later that evening though, where I had some fantastic octopus, so it wasn't a complete washout. Just about though.

Day 8-13:

We'd been moving around so much that both of us were ready to find one place to hang out in for the rest of our trip, and we settled on the area around Lamia - plenty of campings, on the sea in case we wanted to take a dip, and close to several archaeological sites and a big wilderness area. We drove east towards Trikala through some spectacular mountains, and then headed south past Lamia where we found a great camping in Ag. Serafim, right on the sea, where we stayed for the rest of the trip.

The first couple of days there we didn't do much besides walk on the beach, drink Metaxa, and try to make friends with all the skinny little cats who rambled about the place. (We did manage to get on petting terms with a few of them before we left.) Once we'd rested up a bit, we headed down to Delphi for a day - what an amazing place. The site museum at Delphi was also closed, which was a huge disappointment - there was such a long occupation at Delphi that having had the opportunity to go through the museum exhibits would have helped us to keep all the time periods and sequence of building straight in our heads. (This could be one of the downsides to travelling Greece in the off season, although you'd think that September would be close enough to the high season that all the museums wouldn't immediately close down.) Even so, it was fantastic to see. Later on we also visited a medieval Frankish castle at Mendenitsa - there wasn't much there except the castle, no signs or anything, but the village itself - as well as the surrounding ones - was fantastic, nicely rustic and ramshackle, with lovely low rolling hills all around. Be careful of the road in from Lamia, however – it’s quite small and windy, and a lot of it was washed out, so we ended up finding other backroads for the return trip.

On another day we drove out to the Iti Mountains national park, and climbed the peak. We got a late morning start, and since it takes 3.5-4 hours to climb up and another 3.5-4 hours to climb back down, we couldn't spend more than an hour at the top unless we wanted to have to climb down in the dark. It was spectacular though - the trail doesn't actually end at a peak, but at a high meadow plateau in a saddle between two peaks. It was so beautiful, and quite strange - facing one way you could almost feel you were at a sea-level pasture, then turning to face the other you'd see the mountain peaks dropping off into deep gorges. It was an easy-ish climb for us two moderately fit people wearing Tevas rather than hiking boots, and there is crystal clear mountain springwater available at a myriad of springs and wells all up and down the mountain, so you'll have plenty of places to refill your water bottle.

We spent the last day wandering around Lamia. We visited the archaeological museum in the morning, which on top of a rather steep little hill in the center of town. Our Lonely Planet guidebook made it seem like it would be a really strenuous climb, but it's actually not very bad at all, and the view of the city from the top is worth seeing. So is the museum, which only has a couple of rooms devoted to exhibits, and most of the signs are in Greek, but it was all very well laid out, and very interesting overall. We also had the most fantastic roast lamb for lunch - basically just a huge platter of roasted lamb and some bread, and luckily a tomato salad we'd ordered to split, which was our only vegetable. I'd have gladly forgone the salad for just a little more of that lamb, though. It was delicious.

*****

Particulars:

* Don't worry too much about memorizing the nearest Greek equivalents of the Roman alphabet before you go, since (if you're like us) you won't remember them well until you're confronted with it daily, and then you'll pick it up pretty quickly. That said, it's helpful to know the names of the Greek letters in your native language to use when you're having to spell out the Greek names of things to travelling partners. We also found it useful to write out the Greek alphabet with pronunciations and the nearest Roman equivalent on one side of a sheet of paper, and the Roman alphabet with the nearest Greek equivalents on the other side, to use while travelling. This was especially helpful as our maps all used transliterated place names in Roman letters, so we often wrote out place names using Greek letters to help us recognize the roads signs when we came across them.

* Most of the tourists in the parts of Greece we went to seemed to be from the UK and Germany, and those are the two other languages most used by Greeks in the Peloponnese, Lefkada and the mainland, although many people along the west coast also spoke Italian. However, most people in the rural mainland speak only Greek.

* Greek plumbing can't deal with paper, so the norm is to throw your used toilet paper into the bin beside the toilet. It's not so difficult to remember not to throw toilet paper into the loo when you force yourself to fish out the soiled paper you've already thrown in - one or two times doing this and you won't forget again. Less messy but more embarrassing is trying to train yourself out of the habit once you've returned from your trip. Along similar lines, Greek establishments even in the hinterlands are pretty good about keeping stocked up with loo paper, but there were enough that didn't that made me glad I'd developed the habit of always carrying loo roll in my pocket.

* Pretty much everything besides restaurants closes by 4pm on Saturday, so if you're self catering be sure to pick up your weekend supplies at the market before then.

* When we weren't in camp or off hiking somewhere I wore my usual summer uniform of sandals, sleeveless shirt and knee-length skirt, with a cardy if the weather was cooler, which seemed to fit in perfectly with the usual uniform of small-town middle-aged Greek women. Although I did see a few miniskirts, most younger Greek women seem to stick to skintight jeans and trousers.

* September is still warm for a summer trip, but definitely the off-season - there were so few people around that we pretty much had our pick of camp sites, restaurants and whatnot. The weather can be more unsettled during this time, especially in the north, but it always cleared up enough for us to be able to dry our tent out so we never had to pack up wet. I definitely recommend travelling to Greece in late summer or early autumn to beat the crowds.

******

Things I would do differently:

* We mainly camped, and flew out with EasyJet which has a quite strict baggage allowance, so we had to pack very conservatively. Clotheswise I brought 3 sleeveless tops, a pair of zip-off trousers, a skirt, 3 pairs of undies and a cardigan. We ran into some unsettled weather and were also on the move quite a bit during the first half of the trip, thus it was difficult to do laundry every day, so I bought a pack of two thin T-shirts for 4 euros, and another two pairs of undies, but probably I could have done without them. What would really have come in handy would have been another pair of (nice) trousers - it was quite cool some evenings, and even when it wasn't I found wearing trousers more comfortable than wearing insect repellent (viz. mosquitos), and towards the end of the trip my zip-offs were looking distinctly grubby for cooler evenings out.

* I have an old textbook on Greek archaeology from the earliest periods up through the Byzantine, that I just made a few notes from and left at home. This was a huge mistake - I really, really wish I'd brought it with me. If you're interested in making a trip to Greece primarily for the ancient history, I strongly recommend bringing a good history guide with you.