Athens Day Trip

An Athens day trip leaves the city in the morning and returns the same evening. It reaches ancient sites, mountain towns and islands within driving or sailing range. The trip is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville.

This post covers what an Athens day trip includes, the motorways out of Attica and the sites of north Attica. It also covers Marathon, Hosios Loukas, Arachova, Chalkis, Thebes and the mountain parks.

Kalavryta, Nemea and Methana follow. The distances to the classic sites, the best months and common questions come last. The sections include Athens day trips that can be booked online.

What is an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip goes out to a site from a home, hotel or hostel in the morning. It returns to the same lodging in the evening. The place lies close enough for a round trip within one day. No overnight stay is needed.

UN Tourism counts a visitor without an overnight stay as a same-day visitor, or excursionist. A visitor who stays the night counts as a tourist instead. An Athens day trip therefore belongs to the excursionist group.

In medieval times, a day trip had a religious goal, such as a nearby shrine. Others had a commercial goal, such as a seasonal fair. Railway excursions of the mid-19th century later grew a distinct day-tripper industry.

An Athens day trip starts in the Attica region, set up in the 1987 administrative reform. The Kallikratis plan, a local government reform, made it self-governing from 1 January 2011. Today the region holds eight regional units and 66 municipalities.

Attica covers about 3,808 square kilometres. The 2021 census counted 3,814,064 residents. That count was 35,965 lower than the previous census, a fall of 0.9%. More than 95% of residents live in the Athens metropolitan area.

An Athens day trip begins on a hilly plain framed by four mountains. Clockwise from the southwest, they are Aigaleo, Parnitha, Penteli and Hymettus. The Athens urban area spreads across that plain.

• Karavola: The name of the top peak of Parnitha first appears in records in 1922.
• Hymettus: Locals call it Trellos, meaning crazy, for its winding length of 16 km.
• Aigaleo: This limestone mountain rises to 469 m west of the Athens plain.

The Kifisos, the longest river in Attica, rises near Varibobi. It crosses the Athenian plain and empties at Faliro. Hymettus was noted for its thyme honey. Its highest point, Evzonas, reaches 1,026 m.

Which motorways carry an Athens day trip out of Attica?

An Athens day trip by road uses motorways that private firms build and run. The A1 is the principal north–south road connection in Greece. The Olympia Odos is a motorway system on the Peloponnese. A bridge at Rio links that peninsula with the mainland.

An Athens day trip north joins the A1. The motorway ends at the Evzonoi border station, on the border with North Macedonia. The first section of the new road, from Larissa to Katerini, opened in 1959.

The firm Nea Odos runs about 172.5 km of the A1, from Metamorfosi to Skarfeia. The firm Kentriki Odos takes over from Skarfeia to Raches. The firm Aegean Motorway runs the 230 km from Raches to Kleidi.

An Athens day trip north crosses that stretch, held under a concession, or state contract. At Tempi, the firm built twin tunnels of 2 km and 6 km. The longer one is the largest road tunnel in the Balkans.

The A8, or Olympia Odos, began as National Road 8A, built between 1962 and 1973. Its Elefsina–Corinth section reached motorway standards in the 1990s. Since April 2017, the full road to Patras has been open.

An Athens day trip west crosses Kakia Skala, a steep coast on the Saronic Gulf. The southeastern ends of the Geraneia mountains form it. Since antiquity, it hindered land travel between Athens and the Peloponnese.

• Tunnels: Five tunnels carry kilometres 46 to 52 of the Olympia Odos past these cliffs.
• Myth: Skiron kicked strangers off these rocks until Theseus threw him off the cliff.
• A7: The Moreas Motorway covers 147 km from Corinth to Kalamata by way of Tripoli.

Moreas S.A. runs the A7 under a deal from 3 March 2008 to 3 March 2038. The Rio crossing is officially named the Charilaos Trikoupis Bridge. Cables from towers hold its 2,252 m deck.

Which ancient sites in north Attica suit an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip north reaches Rhamnous, the best-preserved Attic deme site. Ancient Attica was divided into about a hundred demes, or municipalities. The Amphiareion of Oropos drew pilgrims seeking healing. The forts of Dekeleia and Phyle guarded passes across Mount Parnes, the old name of Parnitha.

An Athens day trip to Rhamnous enters the valley of Limikos. The deme belonged to the Aiantis tribe. People have lived there since the Neolithic, or New Stone Age. The orator Antiphon was born there.

The sanctuary of the goddess Nemesis was founded early in the 6th century BC. In myth, Nemesis laid an egg, which went to Leda. Leda hatched Helen and the Dioscuri, twin heroes, from it.

An Athens day trip reaches a small temple rebuilt early in the 5th century BC. Its walls use polygonal, or multi-sided, blocks. It measures 10 by 6 m. The large temple measures 21.40 by 10.05 m.

The fortress has an outer wall 800 m long. A smaller inner wall rings the hilltop. A theatre and a gymnasium, or sports ground, stood inside. The deme’s agora, or market square, lay there too.

An Athens day trip to the Amphiareion enters Mavrodilesi, a small valley near Skala Oropou. A dry river, Charadra, crosses it. It was the largest sanctuary in ancient Greece of Amphiaraos, an underworld god and hero.

• Stoa: This roofed hall, 110 m long, had end rooms where visitors slept to receive oracles.
• Sacred spring: Healed visitors threw silver or gold coins into its water.
• Dekeleia: Spartans under King Agis II fortified it around 413 BC on the advice of Alcibiades.
• Phyle: Exiles led by Thrasybulus, about 70 strong, seized the fort in 404/403 BC.

Thucydides estimated that 20,000 slaves escaped to Dekeleia. Phyle’s rock is reachable only by a ridge on its eastern side. Menander set his comedy Dyskolos, or The Grouch, beside the Cave of Pan there.

What does Marathon show on an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Marathon reaches the plain of the famous battle against Persia. The playwright Aeschylus fought here. His gravestone verse recalled Marathon rather than his plays. A bronze statue of Nike, goddess of victory, was placed there in 2014.

An Athens day trip to Marathon visits a battlefield with a debated date. In 1855 the scholar August Böckh dated the battle to 12 September. If the Spartan calendar ran one month ahead, the date becomes 12 August.

Ancient writers disagree on the size of the Athenian army. Nepos, Pausanias and Plutarch each give 9,000 Athenians. Pausanias also saw names of slaves freed for fighting on the battle monument.

The poet Simonides lived close to the time of the battle. He wrote a verse for the Tumulus of the Athenians, a burial mound. It praised the Athenians for fighting at the front of the Greeks.

An inscribed stone listing men killed in the battle turned up in Kynouria. It was found at the Roman-era villa of Herodes Atticus. The archaeologist G. Spyropoulos argued that Herodes himself created the mound.

An Athens day trip to the Marathon museum shows Bronze Age finds from Vranas and Plasi. Bird-shaped jugs, bronze arrowheads and beads of semi-precious stone stand out. Vranas takes its name from a Byzantine official who held land there.

• Plataean tomb: Its excavator then served as Greece’s Inspector General of Antiquities.
• Dam plan: Prime Minister Dimitrios Gounaris ruled the 1918 plan illegal because no open bidding took place.
• Builders: Around 450 workers built the dam, then the largest project in the Balkans.
• 1896 race: Charilaos Vasilakos of Greece came second and Gyula Kellner of Hungary third.

An Athens day trip to Marathon meets old legends. Plutarch wrote that the Athenians saw the ghost of Theseus leading the charge. Pausanias told of Echetlaeus, a man in country clothes who fought with a plough.

What does Hosios Loukas add to an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Hosios Loukas reaches a monastery at 430 metres on Mount Stiri. It is also called the Agia Sofia of Roumeli, another name for Central Greece. UNESCO listed it as World Heritage in 1990.

An Athens day trip here recalls Luke of Steiris, born in 896 at Kastri in Phocis. His parents were refugees from Aegina. At 14 he lived as a hermit on Mount Ioannitza for 7 years.

For ten years Luke served a stylite at Zemena, a holy man who lived on a pillar. He ranks among the earliest saints seen rising into the air in prayer.

Luke settled around 946 in the area of Stiris. One reading links the name Stiris to Soterion, a place of healing. The village of Stiri lies midway between Distomo and the monastery. He died on 7 February 953.

The Panagia church takes its name from a title of the Virgin Mary. It is the only mainland Greek church known for certain to date from the 10th century. Its plan follows the Lips Monastery in Constantinople.

An Athens day trip reaches the Katholikon, or main church, tentatively dated to 1011–12. It is the earliest surviving church with a dome over an eight-sided space. Its mosaics date to the second and third decades of the 11th century.

• Abbot’s gift: A mosaic shows the abbot Philotheos offering the new church to Luke.
• Myron: The relics reportedly gave off myron, a perfumed oil linked to healing miracles.
• Sleeping cure: Pilgrims slept beside the tomb to be healed, a rite called incubation.
• Crypt: The Greek Archaeological Service cleaned this burial chamber’s paintings in the 1960s.

An Athens day trip here meets the War of Independence. On 27 March 1821, Bishop Isaias of Salona declared the revolt in Roumeli at the monastery. UNESCO says the Katholikon suffered its worst damage during that war.

What does Arachova show on an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Arachova reaches a mountain town below Liakoura, the 2,457-metre top of Mount Parnassus. The Arachova district counted 2,439 people in 2021. Since 2011 it has shared the municipality of Distomo-Arachova-Antikyra with Hosios Loukas.

An Athens day trip to Arachova meets the clock tower. It began in 1860 as the bell tower of the church of the Presentation of the Virgin. The earthquake of 1870 brought it down.

An abbot of Hosios Loukas from Arachova rebuilt the tower at his own cost. The rock beneath it, called Tyrias, once served as a natural fridge for cheese. By local accounts, the town crier announced news from it.

An Athens day trip also reaches the church of Agios Georgios, or Saint George. A church already stood there in 1676. The present building dates from 1833, as a carved slab in the sanctuary shows.

Local weaving appears in stone. Relief slabs in the churchyard copy patterns from Arachova’s woven textiles, carved by local craftsmen. A painting by Théodore Jacques Ralli shows weavers in Arachova in 1877.

An Athens day trip to Arachova meets formaela, a hard cheese made only here. It has been an EU protected designation of origin since 1996. The cheese has a maximum of 38% moisture and a minimum of 40% fat.

• First lifts: In 1967 the French firm Pechiney set up the first ski lifts at Fterolakka.
• Two sectors: Building at Fterolakka was finished in 1976, and at Kelaria in 1981.
• Slopes: The Parnassos Ski Centre has 19 ski runs, 36 km in total.

Arachova was a battlefield in 1826. From 18 to 24 November, Greek fighters trapped 2,000 Ottoman troops under Mustafa Bey. Greek officers held the church of Agios Georgios. Greek losses came to 12 killed and 20 injured.

What does Chalkis show on an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Chalkis reaches the Euripus Strait, the channel between Euboea and mainland Boeotia. Its tides run strong, though tidal flows stay very weak across the eastern Mediterranean. A pioneering bridge, a fortress and a philosopher’s will complete the picture.

The name Euripus comes from an ancient Greek word for a narrow sea with violent tidal flow. A dike, a natural wall of sediment, blocked the strait until an earthquake about 6000 years ago.

An Athens day trip meets a tidal riddle in the strait. Near each reversal, whirlpools form and make sailing even more dangerous. D. Eginitis, director of the Athens Observatory, published the full solution in 1929.

Homer’s epic, the Iliad, holds the earliest recorded mention of Chalkis. Herodotus named the strait when describing the Battle of Artemisium in 480 BC. The Romans once called all Greeks Chalcidians, after the first Greeks they met.

An Athens day trip shows the Euripus Bridge, the first cable-stayed road bridge in Greece. Cables from its towers, 90 m tall, hold up the concrete deck. The bridge is 395 m long. It opened on 9 July 1993.

An Athens day trip also reaches the low bridge in mid-town. A rotating bridge stood on this spot in 1896. The present bridge carries two lanes of traffic. It was extensively refurbished in 1998.

• Karababa: Venetian architect Gerolimo Galopo designed this fortress, so it looks more European than Ottoman.
• Siege: In 1688, the Ottomans held the town against a strong Venetian attack.
• Aristotle: Before dying in Chalkis, he chose his student Antipater to carry out his will.
• Last wish: His will asked for burial next to his wife.

The town of Chalkis counted 64,490 residents in 2021. A railway link to Athens and Piraeus arrived in 1904. The walls of its old town came down around the start of the 20th century.

What does Thebes show on an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Thebes reaches the largest city in Boeotia. The town keeps the remains of the Cadmea, the fortified heart of the ancient city. Its museum shows finds from millennia of human life in the region.

An Athens day trip to the Cadmea visits a citadel named after Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes. Reliable dates for settlement there begin around 1400 BC. Archaeologist Antonios Keramopoulos rediscovered the citadel.

Like the Acropolis of Athens, the Cadmea held public buildings in classical times. The Spartan general Phoebidas seized it in 382 BC. Alexander the Great destroyed it in 335 BC. Cassander rebuilt it in 316 BC.

An Athens day trip to the Archaeological Museum of Thebes enters a building by architect Michalis Souvatzidis. It opened on 7 June 2016. Its covered exhibition space measures about 1,000 square metres.

Clay tablets from Thebes carry Linear B, a script whose signs stand for syllables. Rescue digs in Pelopidou Street and nearby uncovered about 250 tablets. That find equals about 5% of all known texts in this script.

An Athens day trip to the museum also meets painted larnakes, small coffins, from Tanagra. Theodore Spyropoulos began digging a large Bronze Age cemetery there in 1968. Scenes on the larnakes show processions and ritual mourning.

• Leuctra: On 6 July 371 BC, Thebans under Epaminondas defeated the Spartans at this Boeotian village.
• Losses: Xenophon reports that about 400 full Spartan citizens died in the battle.
• Sacred Band: This elite unit had 300 men, paired as male couples.
• Myths: Legends set the tragedy of Oedipus and the birth of Heracles in Thebes.

The latest census counted 21,530 residents in the community of Thebes. The town stands 215 m above sea level. By the middle of the 12th century, Thebes led silk production in the Byzantine Empire.

Which mountain parks can an Athens day trip reach?

An Athens day trip to the mountain parks reaches Parnitha, Tatoi and Penteli. Parnitha is the highest mountain on the Attica peninsula. Tatoi’s ancient and official name is Dekeleia. Penteli holds a cave nicknamed after a 19th-century bandit.

An Athens day trip enters Parnitha National Park, set up under royal decree number 644. The mountain’s top reaches 1,413 m. Records list 132 bird species on the mountain, living there all year or by season.

Cephalonian fir, a Greek fir species, dominates the higher slopes. Aleppo pine takes over on lower ground. A study published in 1958 recorded 818 plant species. They equal 15% of all Greek plant species.

An Athens day trip reaches a park struck by a wildfire on 28 June 2007. The fire burned about 56 square kilometres. It killed 150 red deer, an endangered species. Afterwards, the deer grew used to visitors.

The Bafi refuge, a mountain hut, belongs to the Hellenic Mountaineering Club of Athens. It stands at 1,161 m. Donations, mainly from members, funded the first part of the building, finished in autumn 1939.

An Athens day trip to Tatoi reaches the old summer home of Greece’s royal family. Arson, a fire set on purpose, ravaged the palace in July 1916. King George the First bought it in 1872 with private funds from Denmark.

• Royal cemetery: King Constantine II, who died in 2023, lies in this private cemetery.
• Penteli: Its ancient name, Brilessos, lives on in the suburb of Vrilissia.
• Monastery: Saint Timotheos founded the Penteli Monastery in 1578, about 430 m up.
• Fire: A blaze in early July 1995 burned three quarters of Penteli’s slopes.

Davelis Cave lies in the ancient Spilia quarry, about 700 m up. Its church frescoes, paintings on plaster, date from the first half of the 13th century. A smaller cave at about 800 m held a shrine of Pan.

What does Kalavryta add to an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Kalavryta adds a steep mountain railway, two old monasteries and a war memorial. A river gorge with steep cliffs lies north-east of the town. Mount Helmos rises above the area with pine forests and ski slopes.

A rack railway climbs steep slopes with a geared wheel. Work on the Kalavryta line began in 1889 and ended in 1895. The French firm ATON built it. Italian craftsmen with experience in the Alps assisted.

An Athens day trip rides a line dreamed up by Alexandros Fotilas, the area’s member of parliament. Builders chose a narrow track for smaller, nimble carriages and lower costs. Where no toothed rail runs, the slope never passes 3.3%.

Trains reach no more than 40 km/h on plain track and 12 km/h on the rack. Four diesel-electric trains from Stadler Rail, with engines that feed electric motors, entered service in 2009.

An Athens day trip into the gorge follows the Vouraikos, a river 37.5 km long. Legend says Hercules opened it to reach Boura, daughter of Ion and Helice. The gorge shelters rare plants such as the rock bellflower.

An Athens day trip also reaches Mega Spilaio, home of the Orthodox bishop of Patras from about 1354. Latin, or Western Catholic, lords then held Patras. A 1934 fire destroyed its main church, replaced in 1937.

• Agia Lavra: Anthimos finished the monastery’s frescoes, or wall paintings, in 1645.
• Motto: The cry “Freedom or Death”, first heard at Agia Lavra, became the revolution’s motto.
• Executions: German troops shot 22 monks and visitors at Mega Spilaio in December 1943.
• Snow: The Helmos ski centre holds the only snowboard park in Greece.

In Operation Kalavryta, German troops destroyed 28 communities and burned about 1,000 houses in the town. Troops loaded seized food and goods onto the mountain railway. The town museum opened in 1993 to teach peace.

What does Nemea add to an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Nemea adds a temple of Zeus, a stadium and a protected wine zone. Archaeologists have raised fallen temple columns again. Modern runners still race on the old track. The red wine follows strict written rules.

Nemea lay on neutral ground where ancient Achaea, Arcadia, Argolis and Corinth met. That suited a sanctuary shared by all Greeks. Its Temple of Zeus covered about 9,240 square feet. Each column stood about 42 feet tall.

An Athens day trip to the temple shows the result of a long repair. Earthquakes and looters toppled columns over two thousand years. Each column drum, a round stone section, weighed about 2.5 tons.

Frederick Cooper of the University of Minnesota catalogued 1,100 stone blocks around the temple. Nikos Makris led the rebuilding from 2004 to 2009. Stone for missing pieces came from a nearby quarry.

An Athens day trip to the stadium visits a track once deeply buried. A 1942 photo by the Luftwaffe, the German air force, showed the stadium’s shape. Diggers reached the starting line on 19 July 1974, 6.85 m down.

An Athens day trip passes a track cleared by machine. A loader removed about 40,000 cubic metres of earth. Theodosis Zavitsas uncovered the entrance tunnel in 1978. Before each festival, ancient crews dug, levelled and rolled the clay track.

• Events: The writer Apollodorus lists running in armour, archery and music contests.
• Revival: More than 4,800 people from 120 countries, aged 6 to 96, have raced here.
• Wine law: The EU has protected the Nemea PDO, or Protected Designation of Origin, since 11 June 1981.

A dry red Nemea holds no more than 4.0 grams of sugar per litre. An official panel tastes each year’s wines, and failures lose the name. The zone averages 17 °C and 750 mm of rain a year.

What does Methana add to an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Methana adds an active volcano, warm springs and ancient walls. The peninsula holds 32 volcanic domes. Its last eruption built a lava dome, a mound of thick lava, in 230 BC. A spa town still uses the hot water.

Methana covers about 44 square kilometres. An isthmus, a neck of land 300 m wide, ties it to the Peloponnese. Chelona, the highest peak, reaches 740 m. It ends the active Aegean volcanic arc in the northwest.

An Athens day trip here meets an eruption that ancient writers described. Strabo said fire raised a hill seven stadia high, a stadion being an old Greek length. He said the sea boiled for five stadia around it.

Ovid told how a treeless hill near Troezen was once a level plain. Trapped winds, he wrote, swelled the ground like air in a bladder. The cone near the village of Kameni Chora rises 417 m.

An Athens day trip to the spa finds hot springs in three areas. At Loutra Methanon, water rich in hydrogen sulphide, a sulphur gas, flows from white limestone. It runs at 27.0 to 34.4 °C.

Pausanias put the hot baths 30 stades, an old Greek unit, from town. He wrote that fire gushed out first, and then hot, very salty water flowed. In 1930 the state built a bath house with 40 marble tubs.

• Isthmus wall: Nicias led Athenians who walled off the peninsula in 425 BC.
• Fort: In 1826 French general Charles Fabvier built a four-towered castle on those Athenian ruins.
• Citadel: The acropolis near Megalochori, a hilltop fort, is built of local lava rock.

An Athens day trip also meets traces of Egyptian rule. The Ptolemies, Greek kings of Egypt, named their base Arsinoe after Queen Arsinoe II. It was their last Aegean base, and they left in 145 BC.

How far are the classic sites on an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip reaches sites at different distances. Pyrgos, the capital of Elis, lies 308 km from Athens by way of Patras. Sounion and Ancient Corinth are not on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the treaty list of protected sites.

Pyrgos also lies 293 km from Athens by way of Tripoli. An Athens day trip to Olympia ends in a village at 63 m. The Altis, a walled holy area, spanned over 183 m a side.

Ancient Corinth sits below Acrocorinth, a steep rock that rules over the whole plain of Corinth. The village of Mykines, by Mycenae, stands at 109 m.

An Athens day trip to Epidaurus ends at the healing sanctuary of Asclepius. The sanctuary lies about 30 km from the town of Nafplio. It lies 20 km from Nea Epidavros.

The Lavrion mines lie between the old town of Thorikos and Cape Sounion. The Temple of Poseidon stands nearly 60 m above the sea. Mining around Lavrion goes back to the 4th millennium BCE.

Greece’s first World Heritage Site, the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, joined the list in 1986. Five Greek sites followed in 1988. An Athens day trip to Mycenae meets Linear B tablets, the first written Greek.

• Olympia: UNESCO lists it under five of its six cultural criteria, or tests.
• Zeus: Olympia became a centre of his worship in the 10th century BCE.
• Sounion: Its temple belongs to Ancient Lavrion, a 2014 entry on the tentative list of future nominations.
• Kastraki: This village near Kalambaka, on the road to Meteora, stands at 270 m.

The Ancient Lavrion entry covers the old mines, the settlement of Thoricus and the temple. Lavrion silver once helped pay for Athenian buildings and the navy. An Athens day trip to Sounion ends inside it.

Which months suit an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip to Olympia can pass Tripoli, a city of cold winters and hot, dry summers. At 655 m, it can get snow or sleet from November to early April. August there brings only 3.3 rain days. Tripoli’s January rain reaches 103.6 mm.

Tripoli lies in the centre of the Peloponnese, beside a basin about 30 km long. Its winters bring lows below −10 °C at times. January averages a high of 9.6 °C and a low of 0.7 °C.

An Athens day trip in high summer meets strong heat in Tripoli. Summer temperatures there can pass 38 °C. July averages a high of 30.4 °C, and August 30.5 °C.

December is the wettest month in Tripoli, with 125.8 mm over 15.6 rain days. July gets only 19.4 mm of rain. In Kalambaka, near Meteora, the yearly rain total reaches 714.4 mm.

An Athens day trip to Delphi reaches the foot of Mount Parnassus. Its ski centre, the largest in Greece, opened its first two lifts in 1976. It runs from December until late spring.

Melting snow from Parnassus feeds the water supply of nearby towns. An Athens day trip to Meteora in January meets a mean of 2 °C at Kalambaka. July there averages 23 °C.

• Damp air: Tripoli humidity averages 77.5% in December and falls to 44.1% in July.
• Wet autumn: Tripoli rain rises from 66.1 mm in October to 108.8 mm in November.
• Other holidays: Theophany, or Epiphany, falls on 6 January, and the Dormition, Mary’s main feast, on 15 August.
• Sundays: Greek law makes every Sunday of the year a public holiday.

Greece keeps twelve national holidays each year. In Tripoli, April averages a high of 17.4 °C. October averages 20.7 °C, and late spring reaches 23.0 °C. They sit between winter and summer levels.

What do first-time visitors ask about an Athens day trip?

An Athens day trip raises practical questions. Visitors ask about UNESCO, speed limits and Greek road signs. They also ask about money, the clock and the emergency number. Greece ratified the World Heritage Convention, a UNESCO treaty, on 17 July 1981.

What does UNESCO status mean for an Athens day trip?

World Heritage Sites are places with legal protection under a treaty that UNESCO runs. They hold cultural, historical or scientific value. UNESCO judges them under ten criteria, or tests. The first six criteria are cultural, and the last four are natural.

How large is the UNESCO list of Greece for an Athens day trip?

Greece has 21 properties on the World Heritage List. The convention was adopted on 16 November 1972. Greece also keeps 11 sites on its tentative list of future nominations. UNESCO accepts a nomination only after a site appears on that list.

What speed limits apply on an Athens day trip by car?

Greek motorways carry a general speed limit of 130 km/h. Expressways allow 110 km/h, and rural roads 90 km/h. Built-up areas default to 30 km/h unless signs say otherwise. Greek car licences start at age 18. Non-EU drivers need an International Driving Permit, unless their country has a recognition deal.

How does an Athens day trip handle Greek road signs?

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters. It was adapted from the older alphabet of the Phoenicians. The Greek standard ELOT 743 turns those letters into Latin ones on information signs. Danger signs are triangles with a red border.

Which currency and clock does an Athens day trip use?

Greece joined the euro area on 1 January 2001. Euro cash replaced the old Greek drachma one year later, in 2002. Greek clocks run on Eastern European Time, two hours ahead of world time. Summer time adds one hour from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October.

Which number calls for help on an Athens day trip?

The number 112 reaches emergency services free of charge anywhere in the European Union. An EU Council decision of July 1991 made it the European emergency number. Greek police answer on 100, and the coastguard on 108. Ambulance calls go to 166, and fire calls to 199.