Athens metro area, places tourists never see

As I am sick of always seeing photos of the Acropolis and the surrounding areas, I am going to post a couple of pictures from some of the suburbs of Athens, some of them in the Western part of the metropolitan area and some others in the Northern part. The former areas are poor, without proper city planning, while the latter are rather upscale.

Starting from the elegant areas, here is Thrakomakedones:













Dionysos follows:







Kifissia:

A typical café:


A typical street:


Typical shops:











This is a street in Maroussi. The strange structure at the end is Maroussi station in line 1 of the Athens Metro, which deserves a thread of its own that will follow soon:



Kifissias Avenue, which leads from downtown Athens to the Northern suburbs:



The fastest way to drive through the city from the South to the North is through the freeway which was built for several kilometers above the river Kifissos and was completed in 2004, just before the Olympics. The pictures were taken on a Saturday morning, thatÂ's why the road is so empty. On working days traffic there is horrible, with thousands of heavy trucks, some of them insisting on driving on the left lane!





















This is the end of the beautiful part. Now get ready for some of the ugliest urban landscape in Europe. I wish other forumers had the guts to show similar pictures of their cities.

This is Perama. Those houses on the hills remind me of RioÂ's favelas, but, unlike Rio, Perama is completely safe.















Drapetsona, which is near Perama:













Believe it or not, this is the main street of the Â"gay villageÂ" in Athens:



If someone knows a European city with such extreme contrasts, please let me know. Note that people who live in the above places speak the same language and belong to the same race.>