What is an easy alternative to flying to Athens from London?
Upvote:6
There used to be Orient Express trains from London to Athens, but those stopped running... in 1962!
There are at the moment very limited international train services between Greece and the rest of the world. According to Wikipedia, the only trains running at the moment are:
- Thessaloniki – Skopje – Belgrade
- Thessaloniki – Sofia – Bucharest
- Thessaloniki – Sofia* Arrival train into Thessaloniki connecting with the 11pm service to Athens, thus being aimed at connecting passengers from Sofia to Athens
Rome2rio lists an itinerary from London to Athens with a bus from London to Sofia followed by Sofia-Thessaloniki and Thessaloniki-Athens trains, with a total of over 2 days and 5 hours (40 hours of which on the London-Sofia bus!).
The shortest option they list without a flight involves 5 trains, one bus and one taxi, taking a bit under 34 hours (London - Brussels - Frankfurt - Wien - Bratislava - Thessaloniki - Athens).
Very long distance trains have become a rarity in Europe, and the Paris-Moscow service is a bit of an exception.
The option with the least changes (but by far not the fastest) would probably be London - Paris - Venice - Patras - Athens.
I love trains, but I would most definitely fly!
Upvote:11
The Man in Seat 61 has a detailed exploration of train routes from London to Athens, some including ferries.
Note that the state of basically all forms of transportation are in an indefinite state of flux due to the pandemic. It's impossible to say firmly whether cruise ferries from Italy to Greece will be running in December, and if they run, it's impossible to say on what schedule. This makes planning difficult, as small changes to the schedule of one segment can break the entire journey.
A trip like this before a cruise is also risky, as there are so many opportunities for your journey to be interrupted, which could cause you to miss your cruise. If you're relying on, say, four trains and a cruise ferry (plus various local transit systems) to get you to port on time, a problem with any one of those could ruin your trip or at least require significant scrambling to find alternate transportation.
None of these methods really count as easy: all will require at least a couple days of travel and a number of changes. Option one, with trains to Italy, an overnight ferry to Patras, and a bus/train trip to Athens was at least doable in normal times, though I would personally want to pad my time in Athens significantly before a cruise before trying it. Flying is probably the most practical option in terms of travel time and certainty.
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