After a short one hour flight from Istanbul, we arrived in Athens, Greece this evening.   At the moment, there are no budget airlines flying to Athens, so we took a flight with Aegean, a regular carrier.  Although it was a bit more expensive (€180 for two one-way tickets to Athens), I have to say it was nice not to fly with a budget airline for a change!

Unlike when we arrived in Istanbul, today we flew from Atatürk International Airport, Istanbul’s primary airport.  We had initially planned to take the tram there, but every time we rode the tram this week it’s been completely full and getting on with luggage would be difficult.  We decided it would be worth it to pay for a shuttle, but our hotel wanted a ridiculous €30 to hire a ride to the airport!  Luckily, the travel agency (Mysia) across the street had a shuttle at 12:35 pm for just 11 lira per person.  Our flight was not till 5 pm, but the extra time turned out to be necessary because the shuttle driver was late picking us up and there was heavy traffic.  I’m not sure what was scarier, the bus rides yesterday or our shuttle driver’s erratic impatient driving today… If you’re considering using a shuttle in Istanbul to get to the airport, give yourself plenty of time and prepare for a rough ride!

When we got to Atatürk Airport, we were surprised to find we had to go through security to enter the airport.  Since you have to go through another security check before you board (there’s a scanner and metal detector thingy at every gate!), they don’t worry about things like liquids at the first security check, but you still have to take out your laptop, empty your pockets, take off your coat, etc.  I understand why you’d want to check people as they go into the airport, but it’s quite a hassle to have to go through security twice! 

Unlike budget airlines, regular carriers like Aegean, Air Canada, Delta, etc. allow up to two pieces of carry-on luggage (one small and one regular size).  From our experience, as long as your carry-on looks like standard carry-on size, the check-in staff don’t hassle you to weigh or size-check it (they also allow you to check one piece of luggage weighing up to 30kg without an extra charge).  When you’re living off the contents of two 35-litre backpacks, everything is necessary and important so we never check our bags.  But, fully packed, our bags weigh about 12kg each so when we fly budget airlines we have to wear extra layers and put heavy things like laptop chargers and liquid toiletries into our pockets to be within the 10kg carry-on weight limit.  Not having to do this today was such a relief!

After a painfully slow (but hassle free) check in, we went through a customs and immigration checkpoint to exit Turkey.  There was a separate line for Turkish citizens and we noticed that all the men in that line were wrapped in towels the way we were when we finished at the Turkish baths!  They were coming from a room next to the bathroom and the signs were all in Turkish, but I’m guessing there’s a bath in there!  There were women as well, but they were wearing pale yellow long-sleeve dress-type garments, not towels.  I asked Ilyas about it when I got online later and he thinks they were going to somewhere called “Umre (Kudüs)” which is a holy place for Muslims…

When we landed in Greece we had no problems getting through customs and we found our way by metro to our hotel, the Best Western Hotel Pythagorion.  We were originally planning to stay at a hostel that was rated pretty high on hostels.com, but when I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor I found a bunch of bad stuff.  I’ve learned my lesson from our past stays – always double check reviews against Tripadvisor because the hostel can delete bad reviews off hostels.com or hostelbookers.com.  And right now, during the low season, most hotels have cut prices but many hostels haven’t so it only cost us 7 euro more per night to have a hotel room instead of sleep in a 4 bed mixed dorm.  The Best Western isn’t in a great location (20 min walk from the Acropolis & archaeology sites) but our room is big, we have a mini fridge to use, the Wi-Fi works great, and there’s a full breakfast included.  I’ll take that over a mediocre hostel any day!