Athens: Worth It as a Greece Base?
Yes, Athens is worth basing a whole Greece trip in, and not just because you have to land somewhere. Piraeus, 25 minutes from downtown on Metro Line 1, is the departure point for nearly every Saronic and Cycladic ferry (check sailings on Ferryhopper before you commit to a date). The road network reaches Cape Sounion, Delphi, and the Peloponnese in under three hours. The one mistake is treating every direction out of the city as a day trip when some of them flatly aren’t.
What You Can Actually Reach From Here
| From Athens | Time to get there | Day trip or overnight | One-way cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aegina (Piraeus ferry) | 40-75 minutes | Day trip | EUR 9-20 |
| Hydra (Piraeus ferry) | 65 minutes to 2 hours | Day trip | EUR 35-50 |
| Poros (Piraeus ferry) | 54 minutes to 2h35 | Day trip | EUR 17-42 |
| Cape Sounion (road) | 1-1.5 hours | Day trip (go for sunset) | Tour from about EUR 40 |
| Delphi (road) | 2.5-3 hours | Day trip, but a long one | Bus about EUR 16 one-way |
| Nafplio and the Peloponnese (road) | 1.5-2 hours to each site | Day trip, long guided loop | Guided tour from about EUR 59 |
| Meteora (road) | 4-4.5 hours | Overnight recommended | Varies by tour or train |
| Mykonos (Piraeus ferry) | 2h40-3h49 | Overnight required | Varies by season |
| Santorini (Piraeus ferry, or fly) | 5-9 hours by sea, 45 min by air | Overnight required | Varies by season |
The Base Is Better Than the Postcards Suggest
Most Athens write-ups sell the Acropolis and move on. What they skip is that the same hotel room gets you to a pistachio-farming island, a car-free stone-harbor town, and a mountaintop oracle without ever changing beds. Aegina alone runs conventional ferries at 70-75 minutes for EUR 9-14.50, or a Flying Dolphin catamaran in about 40 minutes for EUR 15-20, cheaper and faster than most people assume. That’s the case for Athens as a base: it’s not a consolation prize before the real trip, it’s the only place in Greece where this much is reachable without repacking.
Where the Base Argument Breaks
It breaks the moment someone tries to fold Santorini or Mykonos into a single Athens day. The fastest Santorini catamaran still takes about 5 hours each way, and conventional ferries run past 9, meaning a round trip by sea eats 10-plus hours before you’ve set foot on the caldera. Flying closes the gap (about 45 minutes each way) but still leaves a single rushed afternoon. Both islands are trip extensions, not day trips: budget a minimum one-night add-on rather than forcing the math.
The other trap is the packaged Saronic cruise, Aegina, Poros, and Hydra in one outing for around EUR 130 with lunch and a folklore show included. It gives you roughly an hour or two per island before herding you back to the boat. Book a self-guided ferry to one island instead and you’ll see less real estate and remember more of it.
The Verdict
Base your Greece trip in Athens. Book the Acropolis timed slot early through the official hhticket.gr platform, treat Aegina, Hydra, and Poros as genuine day trips, and treat Santorini and Mykonos as separate legs of the same trip, not detours from it. The full day trips guide and the Athens as a Greece base itinerary both build this out day by day, and Athens hotels on Booking.com fill up fastest in the neighborhoods closest to Piraeus’s Metro Line 1.