📃 Printed (tourist) maps 🗺️ (pictures included)

Day 4,656, 06:59 • Published in Greece Greece • by Jimkats1

Printed maps are cool and stuff, but printed tourist maps are what several people want, mostly due to the tourist-related information they provide, such as the so-called POI (Points of Interest), transportation services, useful telephone numbers and some maps also contain advertisements of hotels, restaurants, cafes, etc.
Some maps also contain descriptions of the area they show and of some important POI. Usually in such scale that they fill up the whole one side of the maps and the actual map being on the other side.

Sometimes you may find such maps for free, distributed in information kiosks and even in some shops, because there are occasions which some shops create maps of the local area while also advertising themselves on them.
Usually the printed maps that you buy, typically from kiosk, are purely maps, used to denote as many settlements and roads in the area shown as possible, because those are supposed to be used for travelling via vehicle (half of the navigation part)

We all acquire pretty much at some point one printed map, even if you are not fan of travelling a lot.

Some people, even though we live in the era of Internet where you can use mobile apps to navigate and learn the whereabouts, still prefer at a big part to acquire and utilize printed maps. Then, there are the people who only acquire printed maps but rarely use them. That's me XD

Yea, in this article, after this long intro, I just want to bring everyone who owns printed maps and share them (if they want, like which areas they show) and their opinion about them.

Since I was a little kid (imagine near 2000), I started collecting maps (mainly free ones), wherever they were printed on, that is even leaflets with small map indicating where a shop is XD Till now (August 2020) I have several printed maps from various places in Greece, but mostly from my area :d It's "funny" that few of those printed maps have quite a lot mistakes regarding roads (and in few cases, street names). This sometimes doesn't help me currently that I contribute in maps of OpenStreetMap and Google Maps. Anyway, that's not the point of this article...

(sorry beforehand for the big-res of the pictures, cba to reduce them size 😛)
Most maps I have are in Greek only, some in both Greek and English and few are in fully English.
I have much more maps than shown below (which are only what I managed to found in the last hour 😛), with many maps (from what I remember currently) of Argos-Nafplio-Argolida (or Argolis), some of Arkadia, one of Thessaloniki, one of Agio Oros (or Mount Athos), one of Corfu...

Ioannina
(1 map shown)
One side shows the city of Ioannina (along with advertisements), the other shows the regional unit of Ioannina (along with description of Ioannina and various POI, such as the various museums (silversmithing, wax effigies, folkloric, etc.) and the Perama Cave).


Lesvos
(3 maps shown)
1. One side shows the island of Lesvos (or Lesbos) with description of landscapes and ways, the other side shows the capital Mytilene and the various known villages, such as Madamados, Agiasos, Kalloni, Plomari, etc.). Pretty big map btw, the most useful one in my opinion.


2. One side shows a smaller version of the island with the main roads and settlements. The other side shows most of Mytilene along with some hotels.


3. Mostly same as the map above, but instead of hotels it denotes Ottoman monuments.


Athens
(3 maps shown)
1. Map related to access to the International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos, located in Spata, outside of the metropolitan area of Athens. One side shows the road access, denoting the exits of the ring roads Attiki Odos motorway and Imittos West Peripheral. The other side shows the public transport, denoting most railway routes (suburban, metro), express bus routes and regional buses routes.


2. Map related to Kolonaki district in the center of Athens. One side is a zoom out of the district showing a bit more of the surrounding districts. Both sides contain advertisements, with the main one being the shop from which I got the map.


3. This map is a weird mix up of Nafplio and Athens. Specifically, one side shows the map of the centers of Athens and Piraeus (along with POI descriptions such as sightseeing, eating, drinking and shopping). The other side has similar descriptions but for Nafplio (oh, and the only map shown is small for Attica region). If you don't get why it's a weird mix up, it's because Nafplio is not in Attica, but in Argolis, like 2 hours from Athens.


Nafplio
(1 map shown)
One side contains general info about the map leaflet (along with few useful telephone numbers), the other side shows map of the old town of Nafplio along with POI (and small description about most of them) and some recommended walking routes. Fully English small map, I believe it's a good basic map for a non-Greek tourist coming to Nafplio for the first time.


(this article was just to show part of my collection 😛)