Airport Location: Athens, Greece
Amenities: A handfull of 24/7 cafes
Disadvantages: Not a lot of benches, few corners to feel private in. Everything is more or less exposed.
Athens airport sleeping for me was 100% about the money. Coming off of a rather large nearly $1000 car-fixing stint in Spain, I found myself pinching pennies while on Yacht Week 2011. At the end of the trip, after my Sugar Daddy went home, me and Sugar Daddy’s better half (we share nicely) found ourselves scheduled for early morning flights and without much cents for a hotel room at the hugely expensive Sofitel Athens across the street.
We arrived in the hotel hall at about 11 PM after loitering past our welcome at the hotel spa and restaurant at the Sofitel. After doing a round of the airport and not finding anything in the way of soft benches fit for two, we opted instead for softening our nerves and invested in a couple 40’s of Myknos and found a nice cozy wall near the bathrooms upstairs.
Weakened by brew, we both slept pretty soundly for the 4 or so hours we spent lying there. Being a rather large airport, Athens was pretty bustling all through the night. For that reason, we felt the most important thing to do was to find a spot outside of the main flow of traffic. Once we did that, we actually found it not too bad. The announcements in the airport were at a minimum and coupled with our exhaustion from an 8 day drinking binge, I found it a decent enough place to lay my head for free.
Overall ranking: 6/10 for the abundance of cafes and the selection of over the counter sleeping medication