Athens Metro Pass

It depends on how much you'll be moving arouind, but if you're staying for 3 days you can buy the pass that includes one round trip from the airport and unlimited metro access in the city itself, for €22. This is a good deal if it applies to you.

The unlimited 5-day "all modes" ticket that doesn't include the airport trip is only €9, which is an excellent bargain.

John

It depends a lot on where you are staying and what you are planning to do.

Almost all of the major sites - Acropolis, Acropolis Museum, Agora, Keramicos, Temple of Olympic Zeus - are clustered together and linked by pedestrianised roads. If these are your focus, and you are staying near them, then you will probably hardly use public transport other than to and from the airport.

On the other hand if you are staying further from the sites, or are the sort of people who like to visit different neighbourhoods, then Lee's suggestion of a 5 day ticket is a good one. It means you can hop on metro, bus, trolley or tram as the whim takes you and don't need to fiddle for change for individual tickets. (Btw, you can't pay on individual buses etc. You have to have tickets in advance that you then validate in a machine.)

Despite the ongoing crisis the transport system in Athens is still good, certainly in comparison to London. It's cheap and the transport is frequent and regular. It also covers a big distance. Your 9 euro ticket will enable you to take the tram right down the coast to Glyfada and beyond, for example.

Athens is great. I've just come back from a week there myself. Have a brilliant time.

Alan

We used multi-day passes over four days in Athens, definitely got our money's worth. We were staying near the Acropolis but took the subway out to the National Archeological Museum and the Benaki Museum and the Keramikos. It's an excellent system and some of the stations display ancient artifacts they found digging the tunnels. One of the major stations (Syntagma?) is deep underground and going down you see the layers of soil they dug through, thousands of years' worth, with some of the things they found there. Very cool.

Yes, Syntagma is the station with the most extensive remains.

Alan

Thanks for the input.