- Transport:
o Athens:
§ Airport:
· Athens Airport appears to be modern but too small in size given the huge amount of passengers at the end of August
· The airport is connected with modern metro line 3 to the city. The trip takes about one hour and costs 6 Euros per person. In our case (two persons travelling) a special price of 10 Euros applies.
Although we took a taxi from the airport to the city on arrival (about 32 Euros including fee for the baggage and highway), we recommend taking the metro as we did on the way back avoiding the road traffic congestion.
§ Metro:
· Athens modern Metro system helps avoiding road traffic congestion. We have used it several times on our excursions in the city. The regular price for a ticket is 0,80 Euros (validity 1,5 hours). There are several types of group and day tickets (3 Euros for one person). Special prices apply for the connection to the airport (6 Euros for a single person).
§ Taxi:
· On arrival, we used a taxi to reach the city center from the airport (32 Euros including baggage and highway), but wouldn’t recommend to do it again. Given the usual traffic congestions, it seems to be wiser to take the metro.
§ Maps:
· We received a free map of Athen’s city center in our hotel Novotel Athenes (see accommodation). It was sufficiently detailed for our trip.
o Samos / Chios / Lesbos:
§ Rental Cars
· Many rental car offices offer their services. We made reservations for the cheapest car category at Avis for all three islands via Internet before the trip. If you haven’t reserved a car, you will most probably be rejected. For our three day rental terms, the daily rate was about 50 Euros
§ Buses:
· There are regular island bus lines but we have not used them
§ Fuel stations:
· We didn’t have any problems finding fuel stations for our rental cars on the islands. Fuel stations offer free service.
§ Ferries
· The trip from Samos to Chios takes about three hours. It was good to book the tickets in advance via Internet (URL ?, 1 Euro more per ticket), as during high season the amount of passengers can be high. Price for the “on deck” category is Euro 12,70 per person.
We took the ferry on Aug 21, 2008.
· From Chios to Lesbos, the ferry takes again about three hours. We recommend booking the tickets by Internet also in this case (URL ?). Price for the “on deck” category is Euro 13,90 per person.
§ Maps:
· We bought the islands maps of Freytag & Berndt before our trip (ordered via www.freytagberndt.com). While the maps of Samos (1:50.000) and Chios (1:100.000) seemed to require a revision of the author, the map of Lebos (1:75.000) was very helpful.
