Oslo to Athens is around three and a half hours in the air and closer to seven door to door, and the flight is the easy part. What catches Norwegian visitors out is not the journey but the rhythm at the other end, and the size of the city they land in.
Getting there
Direct services run from Oslo Gardermoen through the summer, with the network widening from May to include Greek island airports on charter routes. Outside the season, Athens is generally the only direct option and everything else connects.
Gardermoen is 50km from central Oslo and the airport express covers it in about 20 minutes, which makes the Norwegian end of this journey one of the most efficient airport transfers in Europe. The Greek end is not. Athens airport at Spata sits 33km east of the centre, the metro takes 40 minutes into Syntagma, and the road can take longer.
The clock
Greece is an hour ahead of Norway and several hours behind it in habit. Restaurants fill from 9.30pm, bars from midnight, and Friday and Saturday shift about two hours later again. Anyone arriving with a Norwegian evening schedule will find the city closed at seven and crowded at one.
This is not adjustable and there is no point fighting it. Move your day back three hours on arrival and the city makes sense.
Choosing where to stay
Athens is a basin with distinct zones rather than one centre, and the choice matters more than the hotel does.
- Historic centre, Syntagma and Kolonaki and Plaka: everything on foot, nothing parks.
- Syngrou corridor: the big hotels, 15 minutes to the centre and 15 to the sea, easy addresses.
- The Riviera, Glyfada to Vouliagmeni: 25 to 40 minutes out, summer hours, late evenings.
- Northern suburbs, Kifisia and Marousi: quieter, earlier, heavy traffic at peak.
- Piraeus: only if your ferry leaves early.
What surprises Norwegians most
Prices, in the other direction. Norway is among the most expensive countries in Europe and Greece is not, so the usual budgeting instincts overshoot considerably. A long dinner with wine in Athens costs a fraction of the Oslo equivalent, and visitors routinely over-plan around a cost that is not there.
The second surprise is August, when the city empties out rather than filling up, a large share of the restaurants close for three solid weeks, and the streets of central Athens are the quietest they will be all year while every island is simultaneously at absolute capacity.
Where we work
Athens and Mykonos. Not Oslo, not anywhere else in Norway, and nowhere outside Greece. There is no Norwegian branch, associate or contact of any kind, and nobody operates under this name there.
This page previously suggested otherwise, which was wrong and has been corrected. For the Greek end, see Athens and, in summer, Mykonos.
