The Plaka Hotel is a real find. It is ideally situated at the foot of the Acropolis and is amongst ,or within easy walking distance, of many of Athens attractions. It is on the corner of a small side street just a hundred yards or so from the metro station that is at the end of the line from ... Read review
A review by suelr13 on Plaka Hotel, Athens July 21st, 2007
Author's product rating:
Value for Money
Excellent
Quality of Rooms
Good
Standard of Service
Good
Quality of Food & Drink
Average
Cleanliness
Good
Advantages:
Position, Price
Disadvantages:
Basic (but plentiful) breakfast
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
The Plaka Hotel is a real find. It is ideally situated at the foot of the Acropolis and is amongst ,or within easy walking distance, of many of Athens attractions. It is on the corner of a small side street just a hundred yards or so from the metro station that is at the end of the line from the airport. Some bedrooms do have a direct view to the Acropolis.
The hotel staff are friendly and helpful and the accomodation is generally clean and modern. Our room was quite small but not so much that it was a problem. There was an adequate amount of storage space. The bathroom was small and a bit dated but ok, considering the price! We paid £33 a night for a double room with breakfast and thought this was a real bargain. Make sure you compare sites for prices as they vary considerably.
The breakfast was quite basic but included everything you would expect from a buffet breakfast- juices, different breads and preserves, fruit, cereal, yoghurts, cakes and pastries, meat and cheeses as well as an hot option (although this was always scrambled egg and sausages, throughout our stay). The breakfast room is a bit cramped but we never had a problem finding an empty table.
The hotel has a lounge with a computer for the use of guests (for a small fee). Coffee, tea (in thermos jugs) and biscuits are also provided in this room -free of charge, for guests to help themselves to throughout the day. However, you do need to catch this soon after it has been provided as each time we tried to get a cuppa it was down to the last drops and luke warm.
This is an ideal hotel if you want somewhere thats good value and convenient for siteseeing. There are loads of good restaurants in and around the immediate vicinity -in fact we were stuck for choice and ended up going to one for our main course and then another for dessert on some nights, just so we could try as many as possible!
If you do go to Athens try eating in the Plaka area of the city-its great for sitting over a leisurely lunch - quite a few of the restaurants have easy chairs outside so you can eat, lounge and people watch away an hour or so in comfort.
...a map. I have a good sense of direction and soon found it easy to get to without a map, but any guidebook will have a decent map of the Omonia area in it, and there are lots of other budget hotels in the area, so it's well-mapped.
The hotel is probably about 5-10 minutes stroll from Omonia square, which in turn is about 25-30 minutes from any of the tourist areas you'd want to go to (The Plaka/Old Town, the Acropolis, and Syntagma square) There is also a subway station at Omonia, and the subway is extensive, and awesome. The National Archaeological Museum is only 3 minutes from the hotel, and well worth a look.
Omonia is not the nicest of areas in Athens. It's very unlike, say, the Plaka; it's run down and not tarted up for tourists. There are some dodgy characters hanging around, however there are also plenty of normal people just...
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Advantages: now a clean and rather quiet city Disadvantages: we couldn't find any in the short time we stayed there
...of eating in the open at the end of February kept me warm! While we were eating, a constant stream of people trying to sell something passed our table, pre-school gypsy children, men from Sri Lanka, Greek musicians and singers from the Balkans, when they didn't sell anything or didn't get any money they moved on.
As we wanted to see Athens by day we skipped the night life and went back to the hotel, the following morning we went back to the Plaka and from there through one of the entrance gates into the area of the Acropolis (April - October daily from 8am to 7pm, November - March from 8.30am to 3pm, entrance fee 12?, half price for senior EU citizens over 65; the ticket is also valid for some other archaeological sites). We didn't stay in the lower part and look at the temple and the other buildings there but climbed up for about ten minutes...
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31.07.2008
07.02.2007
