help with starting our cycling tour from Athens | On Your Bike - Lonely Planet Forum

ONLINE

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 11:20:50 +0000

Hi!

My girlfriend and I will arrive at Athens airport on 10/5. We are planning to do a cycling trip in the Peloponnese for 10 days, and we will bring our bicycles from home in bicycle boxes. We would like to leave the bicycle boxes in a luggage storing place, either at the airport or at Piraeus port from which we will take the ferry to Poros. We are trying to minimize the cycling we are doing in Athens itself because we hate cycling in big cities we don't know so we would like to do all the travels from the airport to the port on the metro with our bicycle if that is possible.

I looked for a storage place at the airport (with Pacific Travel) but its going to be very expensive - more than 50 Euros for a bike....

so the next Idea is to get from the airport to the port by Metro (and to bring the bicycle boxes with the bicycles still in them on the metro), get to the port and then assemble the bike and leave the bicycle boxes somewhere in the port.

is there such a place (that won't be too expensive) in the port? keep in mind that bicycle boxes are bigger than the usual suitcase - the dimensions are 154x25x54....

If there isn't such a place at the port, I think our best option is to try to find a bicycle shop that is close to a metro station (if its close to the airport its even better) and then we will assemble the bicycle when we arrive at the airport, throw away the boxes and on the way back stop at the bicycle shop, disassemble and pack the bikes and go with the metro to the airport with the boxes.

So - if anyone can help me with any of these questions it would be great:

1) a place to store boxes in the port

2) a good bicycle shop that is close to a metro station preferably close to the airport.

Thank you!!

Alon

ONLINE

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:18:44 +0000

Do you particularly want to go by sea to Poros, or are you just looking for a painless way to get to the Peloponnese with a bicycle? If the latter, the obvious thing to do is take the beautiful modern commuter train ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proastiakos ) which goes direct from the airport to Korinthos, which you are allowed to take a bicycle on. Maybe some hotel in Korinthos would look after your boxes.

You aren't allowed to take bikes on the Metro, though if it is still wrapped up in a box and unidentifiable as such, you might get away with it, preferably if it were a box size consistent with a heavily dismantled bicycle.

The commuter train also stops at an interchange station in northern Athens (SKA alias Acharnai), and there is an hourly service from there to Pireas in a commuter train, which I understand you can take a bike on.

Another possibility is that there is a ferry port at Rafina NE of the airport which you can get to without anywhere near so much pain as cycling across Athens. That would be great if you were heading for the Cyclades, but I don't think you can get to the Peloponnese very easily that way without taking a ferry back to Pireas from some island you might go to from Rafina, such as Tyros or Syros.

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