True enough – but reaching the architectural and cultural marvels of the Greek capital gets trickier by the day
Posted in General on 25. Aug, 2010
True enough – but reaching the architectural and cultural marvels of the Greek capital gets trickier by the day. March is the optimum month to visit the Greek capital without the crowds. But should you decide to make the most of off-season Athens, your guess is as good as anyone’s about where you might arrive.
Airports often reflect the cities they serve, and Athens’ Hellenikon airport is right up there with other ancient ruins such as the Parthenon The two-terminal complex is as enticing as a week-old kebab. It functions as the secondary smoking capital of the eastern Mediterranean (which is saying something), and you always seem to get there at 4am – the lowest ebb in the human body-clock, and the low-point of any holiday.At least, though, the old airport is handily located on the coast, just six miles from the city centre and the port at Piraeus. Not so the new airport, called Eleftherios Venizelos (most people in the business call it “Spata”, after the name of the nearby town). It lies 30 miles east of Athens, and opens on 1 March.Or does it?The airport authority has always pledged that will be the date, but for the past eight months everything has gone a bit quiet.
Not a single new press release has appeared on the website ( www.aia.gr) since May. The airlines seem to be in the dark, too.”We’ll land on whatever strip of tarmac they want us to land on,” says Toby Nicol of easyJet, which flies between Luton and Athens twice a day. This conjures an image of the pilot of the overnight flight on 28 February being uncertain until the last moment as to which airport to land on. That’s less of a problem for the pilot than it is for the passengers, particularly those with friends, relations or rental cars waiting anxiously for them.”We’re still waiting to hear from the government,” says British Airways, which flies London-Athens three times a day. Olympic Airways, the Greek national airline, is the most interested party of all, since its entire operation is based at Athens airport (whichever that is). Olympic has to move all its planes and all its staff across in a single bound, while simultaneously keeping a number of flights in the air.You might think that the logistics might be preying on the mind of the airline with just 25 days to go before official changeover night, but not a bit of it. “We are not the appropriate persons to say when it is going to start,” says a spokeswoman.The phrase “flying too close to the sun” comes uneasily to mind.
The whisper is that the shiny new airport at Spata is ready to open, but there remains the small problem of getting passengers, staff and cargo to and from the airport The access roads are not ready. For this morsel of information, I resorted to investing £4 in the new Michelin map of Greece. It shows a shiny new motorway link to the airport as “under construction”, with the ominous note “7/2001″ suggesting it will open in July, the height of the holiday season.***The airport Authority in Athens is unable to confirm or deny the opening date, because to do so, says a spokeswoman, would be illegal.”According to the law, the Greek Minister of Transport will be making an official statement about the opening date.” And when, pray, might that be? “Perhaps on Saturday or some time early next week,” was the closest that I could get while remaining inside the law.For anyone booked to fly to or from Athens in the next few months, the uncertainty is annoying. But go easy on the carping: the fact that aviation exists at all is in no small measure due to the physics and mathematics of Archimedes, and the astronomy and cartography of Ptolemy.”Not in compliance with international aviation safety standards” – that is the US Federal Aviation Administration’s view of Greece. The Washington watchdog has just downgraded the country’s airworthiness, meaning that Greek airlines flying to the US – principally Olympic Airways – face heightened inspections, and are not allowed to start new services to America. In addition, the Department of Defense has banned its members of staff from flights on Greek airlines within Europe.***Olympia in in London is faring little better than Olympic Airways this weekend.
The Grand Hall is hosting Destinations 2001, but the travel gods are not smiling on the holiday show.To make sure that only the most Olympian travellers get there, London Underground has chosen to close the tube link to Olympia right through until 2.30pm tomorrow. Other trains are available, but those operated by Connex and Virgin are running according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, with random delays and arbitrary cancellations.In such circumstances, a folding bicycle like the one pictured becomes the essential adjunct. But mine is off the road following a day trip to Dover this week, during which a group of local lads decided the best way to deter cycling tourists was to administer some impromptu surgery to my tyres. I’ll see you on the bus.***The event at Olympia includes appearances by media luminaries such as Brian Blessed and (as it says in the official programme) Louise Theroux.On Thursday, Andy Perrin – himself one of the leading lights of the skiing industry – queued up to see the most venerable of them all, Alan Whicker.