Airport
Athens Eleftherios Venizelos Airport (ATH)
Almost every Greek itinerary touches Eleftherios Venizelos, and for a good many travellers the airport is a hinge rather than a destination — a landing, a train or a taxi, then a boat or a second flight out to an island. The building helps: one terminal, a station beneath it, coaches at the kerb through the night, so the decision that actually matters is how you cross Attica, into Athens or straight to a port. Everything after that is signage.
Updated 2026-09-22
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One terminal, both sides of the border
Eleftherios Venizelos is a single terminal rather than a set of them, the first thing to know when connecting: arrivals and departures occupy their own levels with shops and food between, and you change flights on foot rather than between buildings. Past security the departures hall divides into a Schengen side and a non-Schengen side, and a satellite concourse reached by an underground walkway opens extra gates at the summer peak.
Domestic flights go from the same side as the rest of the Schengen traffic, which is precisely what turns this airport into an efficient hinge for island trips: an arrival from another European city and a hop onward to Crete or the Cyclades can be one walk with one security check. Anyone flying in from outside the Schengen area meets the border first and rejoins the same building afterwards.
The station under the building, and the coaches outside it
One station serves the terminal and two railways use it. The metro's blue line runs through the middle of the city and on towards the ferry port, while suburban trains share those platforms for the central railway station and the intercity network. Not every departure runs the whole way, so read the destination on the front of the train, not the platform; airport journeys carry their own fare, dearer than an ordinary ticket.
The express coaches are the other half of the answer, and the better half at night, because they work the hours the trains do not: separate routes serve the central square, the ferry port, the intercity bus terminal and the metro station down on the coast. They load at the kerb outside arrivals, take luggage without ceremony, and charge the same whichever of them you board.
Taxis, transfers and the price posted at the rank
Athens regulates its airport taxi instead of leaving it to the meter. One posted price by day and a higher one through the small hours covers the car, the bags and the motorway tolls to any address inside the central zone, whatever the traffic does. Outside that zone — the northern suburbs, the Riviera, the coast — the meter takes over.
Booked in advance, a driver meets you in arrivals with a name board — the calm option after a long-haul landing with children or heavy luggage. The ride-hailing apps here dispatch licensed taxis rather than private cars, so what pulls up is the same vehicle you would have taken from the rank. A stranger offering you a ride inside the hall is operating outside both arrangements.
Islands: the second leg that starts here
For a great many arrivals the airport is not the end of the journey but the start of a crossing, and the crossing can be flown or sailed. Sailing means choosing a harbour: the main passenger port lies across the city, reached by metro, coach or taxi, while the smaller east-coast port is nearer the airport than the city and has its own bus from the terminal, which suits a short list of islands.
Which harbour you want follows from the island, and that logic — which chains connect easily and which do not — is what the Greek ferry map is for. At the airport end two things matter: leave a generous margin between landing and sailing, because a missed boat can cost a day, and travel with bags you can carry up a gangway.
The frontier, the queues and the changeover days
A flight from inside the Schengen zone puts you at the belts and nowhere else: no officer, no stamp. Anything from beyond that zone meets the frontier first, and that hall — automated readers for the passports they accept, a staffed line for the rest — decides how long an arrival really takes. Who uses which lane, and what must be arranged before a boarding pass is issued at all, is the province of the entry rules for Greece.
Departures run to a shape: an early bank of island and European flights, a long-haul wave in the evening, and in high season a crush on the changeover days, when a week of holidaymakers leaves at once. Charter check-in shuts on schedule, not on goodwill. The airport publishes its own live security waits, and on the day that is the only figure worth trusting.
Practical: a working phone, cards and left luggage
Sort the phone out before you fly: an eSIM that wakes as the wheels touch down keeps you out of a shop queue when you need to call a driver, read a platform or open a boarding pass. For cash, walk past the free-standing machines to one wearing a bank's name, and refuse when a screen offers to do the currency conversion for you — that trick and its relatives are set out in money in Greece.
The tax-refund desk is where plans come unstuck: a resident of a country outside the EU must show the goods and the forms before they vanish into a hold bag, which puts that queue ahead of the bag drop rather than beyond security. Luggage storage is outside the security line too, so anything left there must be fetched while you can still walk back out. Reduced-mobility help is arranged with the airline and picked up at the signed meeting points.