Athens DO Dec. 17-19, 2010
 

We want to go back to Athens, and it might as well be party! :p

The tentative agenda is below. I'm keeping this as simple as possible so people will have plenty of time to take in the Christmas festival in Syntagma Square, meander through the Plaka, and visit the shops in the narrow streets on the lower slopes of the Acropolis.

Note: As of today (Dec. 14) the Christmas festival (aka Santa's Neighborhood) is no operating, not sure what's up. It was to have run Dec. 7-31, 2010.

Friday, December 17:
Saturday, December 18:
Sunday, December 19:
Primary Hotel: Airotel Parthenon, 6 Makri Street in the Makrigianni neighborhood, underneath the Acropolis and just around the corner from the Acropolis Metro station, 4* business/leisure hotel, approx. $110 per night.

Look in Plaka for cheaper hotels.

If you want something more upscale, look around Syntagma Square. As long as your hotel's nearest metro station is Syntagma or Acropolis, you're in the right neighborhood.

Transportation: The subway system (Metro) is connected to the airport, and many of the stations also double as archaeological museums displaying items that were unearthed during recent construction & renovation.

Unfortunately, like all Greek government employees, the people who run the Metro like to strike every now and then for whatever reason. You should be prepared to walk 4-5 miles/day or hire ~4 cabs daily if the public transportation is unavailable.

Guides -- available for the Acropolis & the museums but might add substantially to the cost. I'd suggest we consider one for the Acropolis.

For anyone who's "definite", please let me know your preferences for hiring guide(s) and for the Sunday trek (Mars Hill/Prison/Filopappou or the sea).

Definite (13):
Interested/Maybe:
Nah:

Dovster (Parthenon)
SkiAdcock
szg (IC)
violist

Internet Resources Related to Athens DO Dec. 17-19, 2010

Athens Survival Guide: Guide to Athens, Greece 2010

Athens Metro Map

Hotels:

Airotel Parthenon (central hotel for the DO)

You can count me as a definite (heck, Athens is a shorter flight for me than JFK-MIA) but I am not guaranteeing that I will either walk around the city much or go to the sea in late December.

Color me interested in this one, too. I should be safely
retired by then, but if someone comes up with a gig I
can't refuse ...

You could always become one of the street musicians in the Plaka. ;)

Greece with Flyer Talkers, I'm very interested.

I am interested too. Looks like for doing some christmas shopping in Greek. ;)

And one for the Bittites
 

Travelocity emailed a bunch of hotel recommendations, including this one which can be booked at DO-time for $52/night + taxes:
It's 2-3 blocks from the Larissa Metro station. Syntagma (which will be one of our main meeting points) is 4 stops away on the Red line.

This is Travelocity's cheapest hotel offering in Athens. The next one up goes for $72+.

For those of you who remember the Levites (5:-: dwellers :)) vs. the Bittites (1-2:-: dwellers :rolleyes:) in Ljubljana, at 2:-: this might be as close to a Bit as you can get in Athens.

The historical port of Piraeus is looking good for a Sunday excursion:
We can get there by Metro. Ferry trips to the islands reportedly are available, will keep digging.

I have booked the IC for this weekend.

For a single room, I am getting a price of $90 per night (272 Euros for the four nights).

I also found a r/t price of 200 Euros, including taxes, TLV-ATH on Aegean Air, so this trip will definitely be inexpensive for me -- seeing as I am used to forking out just about that much for a flight to Milan and a heck of a lot more to get to the States.

Thanks for the hotel info, but I REALLY, really want to stay at a small hotel in the Plaka. (Points be damned, any suggestions?) BTW did I mention I'm pretty definite for this? Well, I just did and I am. Thanks for setting it up.

& with that we have 5 definites, giving us official "DO" status! :)

There's a discussion of Athens hotels here:
This one is in the Plaka: The Adams Hotel

These two hotels are very close to the Plaka:
Flying home in 2005 I sat next to a Greek native who had moved to the U.S. He gave me the name of his favorite hotel in/near the Plaka which I wrote down on a card. It should be somewhere in the room where we deposit all our travel stuff. "Deposit" is too neat a word, but I'll try to find it.

And speaking of the Plaka, we have to visit Angelo (Angelo: The Ouzo King of Plaka), probably on Friday. :)

I haven't been to Athens in years, so am interested - although it depends on budget at that time of the year. I've already toured all the main events w/ a professor of archeology, but would be fun to do them again. Haven't done the Xmas market though.

I'm a points gal, so at the moment if I did make it I'd probably be at the Marriott (which also has a rooftop bar & pool overlooking the Acropolis), but again that might change depending on the budget.

Cheers.

Yes!

Have a DL 100K Biz award on hold. Need to find something better that doesn't require traversing most of Europe with a one hour connect at CDG.

lili, please let us know what you settle on in Plaka. I've always stayed in Glyfada for outbound\inbound overnights so my Plaka knowledge isn't very good.

First of all, let's find a parade a la Kuching!

Years ago I was in Athens with a tour for one night at a crummy hotel. I asked my friend-tour-leader why we couldn't stay in a small hotel in the Plaka and he answered the obvious: too many of us. But he did say it was where he and his wife would stay if they weren't getting paid to haul us around.

MikeMpls link has some great information, but the hotels were larger and dimmer than I was thinking. I just remember walking around and seeing hotel signs beside quaint doorways and thinking that's where I wanted to be. Always a dreamer ...

Then again, it's a cold time of year, and the Hilton or similar may be the place to be!

One site you might try just to see what's there is "http://www.1800hotels.com".

We used this very successfully last fall to find the best cheap hotel in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul. Just read the reviews carefully & check other sites for reviews, too.

This site has Athens hotels starting at $37+ at DO time!

That was a blast and I'm sure our karma will find something just as good in Athens. The best part is, we won't see it coming at all!

i am in as well - reserved the IC for the weekend at a flexible rate of 127,80€ + tax (including breakfast)

Question: I really do not want to spend 1 hour driving to the train station, 2 hours on the train, 3 hours at the airport (strongly recommended in Israel) and 2 more hours flying just to spend 3 days in Athens.

I would much prefer making it a longer trip. Can I find enough things to keep me interested for a week? How about 10 days?

Athens is easily a 5-7 day town!

We will be there at least two days ahead and maybe the Monday before, won't be leaving until the Wednesday after. Once our itinerary is firm, I plan to add a couple days of "Pre DO" activities to get our bearings and scout out some places in the Plaka & Piraeus.

We'll be open to other activities as well -- either in Athens or day trips elsewhere.

One pointer for those who will be there for longer than the weekend: The Parthenon tickets are actually a set of tickets good for one visit at each of ~ half a dozen sites over a 1 week period. The package is a pretty good deal. If you buy yours early, you'll be able to get into the other sites on your own schedule; just be sure the Parthenon ticket will still be valid on Saturday.

Please add me to the VERY INTERESTED list :) Thanks and hope to see you in Athens.

Before reading this post I sent a PM to BEY about the Do and suggested that he post here. Apparently, he beat me to it. Obviously great minds work alike and I very much hope that he and I will be able to get together for the second time.

Taking your word for it I just bought my plane tickets for Dec 15-22 and reserved a room at the Airotel Parthenon at 68 Euros per night.

Please move myself to the definite list. KLM, getting in after midnight the morning of the 17th. AF, heading back out early the 20th. Staying at some hole in the wall to be determined.

Dovster, Athens can be done in 2 days but there is so much more. If you burn up the city to fast then day trips are easy and fantastic. I'm sure you will not be bored at all.

As a heads-up, we just added this DO to the Consolidated DO list so that may drum up additional interest.

For what it's worth:

Plaka Hotel from 90 USD,
Hotel Hermes from 95 USD
Central Hotel 73 Euro (reg 93)
Hotel Cecil 55 Euro (reg 75)

Thanks, lili. I'm adding these to other links in milepost #2.

CVG to ATH in J? Lookin. :D

For those who may have missed the original connection between BEYFlyer & Dovster, they reported on the start of the 2006 border conflict between Lebanon & Israel here in FT well ahead of the media:This was also the thread in which Dovster's BAG -- Beautiful American [ex-]Girlfriend -- made her FlyerTalk debut.

Dovster & BEYFlyer finally met in person at the PBI meet in Oct., 2007. Pictures of their meeting are here.

Canarsie's complete collection of 2007 PBI Meet photos is here.

Let's hope they can meet again, this time in Athens!

I haven't yet read anything regarding ouzo shots and clubbing until all hours of the night. :confused: Is this on the agenda, per chance? @:-)

I've never been to Greece and was thinking to go this year. But how cold will it be in December??

According to weatherunderground.com the 20th of December tends to hit a low of about 16 degrees C at night and a high of 20 C during the day.

Of course, if you do all that boozing you mentioned you probably won't notice the weather.

We will visit the Ouzo King Friday evening:
For clubbing, how about a bar stroll through the Plaka after dinner? I'm not really into the bar/club scenes, so we'll keep this open & see what people want to do. Google has several good links on clubbing in Athens.

20 deg C = 68 deg F for us Americans, shirt sleeves for some, sweaters for others.

Our plane tickets are booked for the trip:
Post-Athens plan is to spend a day or two in Frankfurt, then return home from Köln/Cologne on Dec. 26.

Speaking of partying and clubbing until all hours of the night, I wonder if there are dance poles in Athens clubs?

And if so, are they reserved for hired performers or are patrons allowed to use them as well?

Actually, the full set of photographs can be found here.

Thank you!

I don't think that's what most of us know as "clubbing". ;)