Customer Reviews

Rick Steves' Athens and The Peloponnese

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I found this book to be very informative on touristy sites in Athens. I agree that there wasn't much else for non-touristy areas in Athens.

I usually love Rick Steves' TV shows and guidebooks. The Athens section of the book only focuses on the touristy area of Athens, the Plaka. There is little to no information on the port area of Piraeus as well as other neighborhoods. The "Eating" section is very limited.

When I travel, I use a few different guidebooks (Eyewitness are great for detailing the main sites, Frommer's is great for restaurants).

I am not planning to visit the Peloponnese so I did not review that section of the book. I do feel an Athens only book with more infomation on surrounding areas would be better.

My husband and I just returned from Greece and brought this book and Frommer's. We found these two books complemented one another very well: one would give very detailed, step-by-step directions to a bus station, e.g., and the other, excellent maps of the area. I disagree stremuously with the poor review of the "Restaurant Steps" restaurants - which Frommer also gave good reviews. The service was good, as was the food - we returned twice - and the music and dancing was lovely. Our waiter remembered us and what we ate - we felt at home. For the Peloppennese, this book was outstanding - we had a wonderful trip because of many of these recommendations

We purchased several travel books for an upcoming trip to Greece. Of the lot, this is by far the best. This book gave a clear detailed description of the areas we plan to visit. It has chapters on where to eat, where to stay, weather conditions, transportation within the city and nearby areas, etc. Several other books purchased on the Athens had nice pictures but were short on the detail I wanted. This book plus the Internet gave us a wonderful advance guide on what to expect and enough detail to understand what we were going to see. Like all Rick Steves books (which we have purchased before for other trips) I only need one book, not several for the trip. This is the ONE book We needed.

This book is very complete and gives you all the essential information. Although Greece is a wonderful country with much to enjoy, Athens is not a city in which most tourists spend more than a couple of days.

Great guide to the sites around Athens. A big help at the various archeological sites with good information and walking tours. Most of the sites (Acropolis, Delphi, Olympia, etc) have little to no information or pamphlets to help you. We used Rick as we tour guide.

I bought this book before traveling to Greece. General info in this books if fine and useful, but there is plenty of it on the internet. Any inside info is absolutely horrible. I cannot imagine he ate at some places he recommends as the best and highest regarded in Athens. First of, some are completely empty at peek season in the end of July in the late afternoon like for example "Xenios Zeus" that he recommends. Second, food is not edible in some of these places. We went to "Geros Toy Moria Tavern" that he recommends as the "highest regarded", oldest in Plaka etc. There is a lot of attitude from the waiters, there are stained menus and dirty linens, if you care for this stuff, but most importantly quality of food itself is below McDonalds by far and half of the food was so salty, you would not eat it if you were very hungry. I asked the manager if he can find anyone in his staff who'd be able to eat what he served us if i pay for food and as much for the person's efforts. There were no takers. Greek food overall is very good though and any random place works better for his recommendations, so i would recommend to use his advice as a black list if you buy the book.

A new edition of this book is available on the Rick Steves web site. Curiously, that new edition is available from Amazon in Kindle format but the paperback version at this location is old (first edition) and there is no mention of a newer version. Please note that my negative rating is concerned with the possibility that a customer will purchase this old edition in error; in its new version, the book itself is very good.
Update: I discovered the new edition at Amazon. Why doesn't this page have a pointer toward it (indicating that a newer version is available)?

Most other parts of the book are good. But if you plan backpack trip with inter-city buses or trains, do NOT count on this book (Ed. 2009, ISBN 978-1-59880-218-4).

I took Greek public bus system (KTEL) to cross Peloponnese in summer 2011 and found out some information about public transportation was seriously outdated (maybe the financial crisis in Greece should be blamed). E.g.:
- The train between Pyrgos and Athens has been canceled since 2010, so does some direct buses including the one between Olympia and Athens.
- There IS a direct bus from Pyrgos to Thessaloniki. So if you plan to go from Olympia to Delphi, you can can take the bus from Olympia to Pyrgos, then stop at Itea and don't have to change at Patra.
- The final stop of bus 051 is right inside the Athens KETL Terminal A (Kifissou) now.

I brought this book only as my travel guide so ran into some really unexpected troubles. I had to re-plan my travel on the fly, each time boarding a new bus. Then I realized how stupid it was to buy a guide book even less than 2 years old for backpack travel. Fortunately my time was flexible, so I still managed to finish the trip in 3 days and enjoyed a lot of places, including Epidavros, Mycenaean, Argos, Olympia, Delphi, etc. These places definitely worth seeing!

This excellent book is just another in Rick's wonderful travel aids. Great help w/hours, what to see, how to get around. We will only be in Athens for 2 days but this book helped us optimize our time. We love Rick!