Current thoughts on Greece
 

We're ticketed to go to Athens on free seats late April for 5 nights. AT one point the seats were nearly impossible to get and as of today I can book the same itinerary.

With events of late, can anyone express an opinion on relative safety and general conditions on a trip like this ? We've no plans to go to the islands for overnights, just Athens and we're admittedly unfamiliar with Greece.

Appreciate any thoughts. A competing itinerary we're holding is Rome to Florence then Milan by train.

Athens will be great for a couple of days, but I would highly recommend some day trips to take you out of the city as well (you can do a day trip to the island of Aegina, it's only an hour away by boat. Also you can get down to Glyfada on the coast with public transportation. Third short trip would be to Sunio and the Temple of Posidon - all three should be very easy to arrange and you can be back in Athens by nightfall).

With the new government, the number and intensity of the demonstrations seems to have died down a bit. I would keep an eye out and just avoid the areas of any demonstrations. Also pay attention as strikes have the potential to disrupt travel (I remember my first trip, I had to wait for four hours for my plane to take off due to an air traffic controllers strike). It's a great country with amazing food and great people. I am heading back in a couple of weeks.

Greece is wonderful and you should have no issues. And I agree with the other poster...get out of Athens and see other cities, towns and villages.

For great up to the minute information you should be asking any questions over on the TripAdvisor Greece forum which has 100's of comments a day.

Thank you both. I'll keep watching on the Trip Advisor forum.

To be candid for as far back as I can remember getting free tickets to Athens on the AA Flyer talk board was always almost impossible. And as of this AM I could have my pick of dates at the very lowest mileage requirement - and this really got my attention and hence my post. If they're giving them away at this late date what am I not seeing ?

I'm thoroughly confused - you're equating the relatively close-in availability of saver award travel on AA with your personal safety in Athens?
Really? How do you put those two factors together?

Close in demand being a barometer of demand. Demand being a judgment passed on the attributes (safety being just one) of a destination.

If you were talking about Mogadishu you may have a reasonable case.
Athens? Not.
Suggest you broaden your knowledge base somewhat.

My goodness, what an inappropriate thing to say. Typical Flyer Talk response.

I was there just two weeks ago and felt completely safe. I would not hesitate to travel there again.
tom911 goes to Dublin and Athens

Thank You. Great trip report and very thorough.

It's a wonderful country with a ton to see and do - I can't imagine you would be disappointed if you went. You might have to deal with some inconveniences due to strikes or demonstrations, but God knows, your alternative plan in Italy could have those exact same issues. I would advise you to go to Athens!

While I disagree with the tone of the above poster, you have to understand the sheer number of Americans who think that as soon as a country is in the CNN evening news, safety must be compromised there. The country is just having some financial troubles - quite a leap from that to large-scale civil unrest or whatever it is that you fear. Hence the knowledge base comment.

It just never fails to surprise me how these boards are used as a personal vehicle for release.

What prompted my initial post was a NY Times front page article about how their hospitals cannot afford nurses and they are being flooded with people posing as nurses. Allowed to enter the premises and appear at bedsides looking for compensation. It just contributes to non Americans like myself to seek the counsel of people with experience.

I live in Greece and I am "connected" to the health system. I've never heard of hospitals being flooded with fake nurses. Either you missed some details (I wonder, though, what these would be), or this is the most amazing (read: bs) story I've heard on Greece. Completely illogical and full of sick fantasy (pun intended). What stuns me most is the fact that for ages I considered the NYT to be well informed :rolleyes:

Much of it may be how you interpret 'flooded'. If this never happened before in Greece and it has happened 5 times now in the past year, that is a major increase in this type of activity, but a drop in the bucket compared to the actual number of patients and nurses in Greek hospitals. So, it could be something that you have never experienced because it remains an extremely rare experience. Perhaps, it is like what happens with aircraft incidents. I feel like the past 12 months have had a lot more adverse aircraft incidents than the recent past. That doesn't mean that air travel is anything other than incredibly safe. It is just that every incident gets a lot of press.

Remember even the New York Times doesn't sell papers by saying there is no news. They may not manufacture a story, but they are going to play up a story to sell their papers.

Back to the OP's question. The same applies. Greece has been in the news a lot lately, because what has happened there, both with the economy and with strikes and demonstrations is out of the norm for Greece and for Europe. However, by comparison to most of the rest of the world, it remains a very safe destination with a lot of appeal. Take advantage of the fact that some may be scared away from it to enjoy a wonderful destination with a few less tourists.