This is the fourth of five blog posts about my recent trip to Athens – the first was a quick hello, the second was a visit to the Acropolis, and the third was about the actual reason for our visit – the LanguageCert HE Summit.
Whilst this wasn’t my first visit to Greece – I went to the Greek island of Crete when I was three, but don’t remember much about it – this was my first time in the Greek capital. As per previous trips to Paris and Dublin, here are some assorted notes about my time in Athens.
Athens Airport
My flights were to and from Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos”, which was opened in 2001 in readiness for Athens to host the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games. As such, it’s relatively modern, but it’s clear that passenger numbers have grown since it was opened. We were bussed between the plane and terminal both times, as there’s not enough airbridges to allow direct boarding. On arrival, we had to sit on the tarmac for a while to get a parking space and again to wait for the buses to arrive – the pilot commented that it was like they weren’t expecting us.
Inside the terminal, I was a little surprised at just how many British/global brands were there – the shops were all WHSmith, and there was a Burger King and Pret a Manger. It turns out they’re all operated by SSP, a British multinational which runs many franchised outlets in airports and railway stations. There were plenty of Greek options though too. Oh, and lots of adverts, in English, for Lidl, advising people that they can still use the Lidl Plus app in Greece.
Whilst our departure was from the main terminal, when I first arrived we were bussed to the satellite terminal. There followed a ten minute underground walk to the main terminal. According to Wikipedia, the airport was built with room to expand, and it looks like it needs it. It has two runways, either side of the A6 motorway, and on the return flight the plane taxied over the motorway to take off. Hopefully they will open another satellite terminal soon, and consider some kind of people mover to get people around more quickly.
The city of Athens
We arrived in Athens on a Sunday, and then Monday was Whit Monday, which in Greece is celebrated as the ‘Day of the Holy Spirit’ and is therefore a public holiday. As such, the city seemed rather closed up and deserted until Tuesday, which for me was just a half day. However, lots of shops seemed to be open late on Monday night, presumably because it’s cooler.
Athens also has a graffiti problem – much more so than Paris which I thought was bad. There were also more buildings in a state of disrepair, with some older buildings looking like they’d had scaffolding around them for years. However, this certainly wasn’t the majority and not reflective of the whole city.
Transport
In terms of transport, Athens has a variety of modes on offer. There’s an underground metro, trams, and trolleybuses, as well as the usual buses – some of which are zero-emission battery electric buses. As befits an ancient city, lots of the streets are quite narrow and there are one-way systems in lieu of dual carriageways in places. Coming from Bradford, which was the last UK city to get rid of its trolleybuses in 1972, it was good to see them still in use in Greece. After all, Greece is not short of sunlight for solar power, and I saw plenty of solar panels whilst there.
I was provided taxi transport to and from the airport, which took around half an hour, but the metro and suburban rail services also connect to the airport, using overhead electrified lines. That being said, I only saw a couple of trains in each direction – the railway is in the central reservation of the motorway links to the airport. Had I needed to take the metro, I would have been able to get very close to my hotel without any changes.
Speaking of motorways, these seemed relatively new and were tolled. Our driver had a toll tag, similar to the one we use when in France. Some of the motorways were quite twisty, with sharper bends that I would expect to see in the UK, but I suspect that this is due to the terrain – we also went through several tunnels.
Almost all signage that I saw was in both Greek and English.
My hotel
I stayed at the NYX Esperia Palace Hotel, which is part of the Leonardo Hotels group. It’s quite new, and way outside my normal budget for a hotel. There are two swimming pools – one in the basement, and a smaller one on the roof. The restaurant is also up on the roof, with a view of the Acropolis – I really enjoyed being able to sit outside at breakfast time with a stunning view across the city.
As a smart home geek, I was particularly drawn to the controls in the rooms. There were several human presence sensors to turn on the lights automatically, and several touchscreen panels to control the lights, air conditioning and even open and close the curtains. For coffee making, there was a Nespresso machine in the room – indeed, it appears that pod coffee machines are really popular in Greece based on my experience.
The hotel was also just on the next block over from LanguageCert’s headquarters. The Wi-Fi was free and worked well.
Mobile phones
I bought a 1 GB eSIM before setting off for £4 on Airalo, rather than relying on roaming. Greece has three main networks:
- Vodafone, which Brits will be familiar with. Indeed, at Athens airport, there was a vending machine selling Vodafone SIM cards which was clearly aimed at Brits.
- Cosmote, which is the state operator but is majority owned by Deutsche Telekom. As such, there’s a lot of T-Mobile co-branding. Brits may be surprised to see T-Mobile still in existence as in the UK it merged with Orange, became EE and was then bought by BT.
- Nova, which is what both my UK SIM on 3 connected to, and the network used by my Meraki Mobile eSIM from Airalo.
Across Athens, 5G internet was widely available. Indeed, it may be that Nova has already turned off its 3G network (as all but O2 in the UK have already done) as when I couldn’t get a 5G or 4G signal, it dropped down to EDGE.
I realised after reviewing this that it sounds like I’m surprised that Greece has similar level of connectivity to the UK, as if my perception is that Greece is somehow less developed than the UK. This was not my intention – I think as someone who would feel very isolated without internet access, I was reassuring myself that I would have good access to services whilst travelling.
Food
The food we had during our stay was nothing short of excellent. Christine and I are both foodies and we cook a lot of Persian food at home, of which Greek food has some similarities. The organisers of the summit took us to a couple of excellent Greek restaurants for our evening meals – again, both with a view of the Acropolis. I ate very well whilst I was away.
Shortly before I left, there was a news article about a Brit who had been to Corfu and complained about the lack of “English” food which made me despair a little. For me, part of the fun of travelling is to try new food. Indeed, one of my gifts from LanguageCert was a Greek cookbook, and there was plenty of Greek honey and cheese to buy at the duty free shop at Athens airport.
Pokemon Go
If you play Pokemon Go, then there’s a Pokemon to catch which is exclusive to Greece and Egypt (and parts of Albania bordering Greece): Sigilyph. They’re not very common – it took me until the morning of my departure on Tuesday to track one down – but they often appeared on my radar. I later caught another at the airport whilst waiting for my flight.
I have one more blog post to follow, which will be another miscellaneous blog post about everything else that happened whilst I was away.
