Athens Greece
Last month, we took a 10-day trip to Greece and Italy (Rome.) I love to travel internationally so I am going to share my experiences of this trip with you and break it up into posts about the three main locations we visited. It was a great experience as I love learning about new cultures and the historical part of places we visit.
Let’s start with our first stop in Athens. I usually love to visit big cities as they have so many things to see and do, but Athens was different. Athens was a city built for about a million people but has a population of almost five million. They also do not have skyscrapers so to say it was sprawling was an understatement. In addition, the traffic was as crazy as I have ever seen! It almost made London or New York look quiet.
One piece of advice that I would usually give (especially when traveling internationally) is to not rent a car. Unless you are someplace like Scotland or Ireland and traveling in the countryside, any type of city driving does not make sense. Hire a driver/service or use taxis/uber to get you where you are going as that makes a lot more sense. And in most of the bigger cities, you can usually walk to a lot of historic sites anyway. When planning your trip, do your research when picking a hotel to make sure you are near sights and able to walk for the most part!
It was great to start our trip in Athens, as it is such a big city and therefore easy to fly to. We usually start our first full day in a big city with a guided walking tour (usually for half a day – 3- or 4 hours is typical) and this was how we started in Athens. Our guide took us to the two biggest attractions that you absolutely must visit, which are the Acropolis and the Parthenon. We started the tour in the Acropolis Museum, which was a great way to get the history and layout of what you would see when you walked up the hill.
Our guide secured our tickets to both the museum and the actual Parthenon long before we got to Athens, which is another benefit of having a guide, they often know the best times or order to do things in. Since the tickets to the Parthenon are timed, they know what the timing looks like and can secure the correct tickets for your visit. If you choose to do this on your own, our timing was something like around 10 am in the museum for about an hour and then our arrival at the actual site for tickets where we could enter between 11 am and noon. You can easily walk from the museum to the site, but it is quite a walk up the hill.
The view and all the various sites to see were amazing! Our guide also took us to see the Olympic stadium and made some other recommendations of sites that we could see. Those included the Arch of Hadrian/Hadrian’s Gate and the changing of the guards at the Parliament building. There were some great shopping streets as well which include Ermou Street and Kolonaki. One of our favorite parts was spending time in the Plaka (the neighborhood of the Gods), which is the old town of Athens. You can simply wander the streets, see the neoclassical buildings, eat at the many cafes and restaurants and visit the souvenir shops – there are a lot of them.
As far as food is concerned, that was one of the best parts. For foodies like us, there were many amazing restaurants to choose from with traditional Greek food. We ate so much tzatziki and pita bread with chicken or pork, and it was amazing everywhere we went. We also had an amazing dinner at our hotel. We stayed at the New Hotel in Athens which was in the city but an easy walk to the Plaka and their restaurant on the roof, The Art Lounge, was a great dining experience! Once our waiter found out we liked wine, but my husband was worried he wouldn’t find one he liked, our waiter made it his job to have us taste the best local wines – one right after the other! It’s a good thing we were only riding an elevator back to our room after dinner.
Overall, we did like Athens but were very glad that we really didn’t plan more than one full day in the city. On day 2 of Athens, we chose to take a tour outside of the city and we hired a driver/guide to help us do the tour. The first stop was The Corinth Canal. This is an artificial waterway that connects the Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea. It is a narrow strip of land separating the Peloponnese peninsula from mainland Greece. It was built in 1893 and is important for trade but was truly an amazing site.
Our second stop was the Archaeological Site of Mykines/Mycenae. In the second millennium BC, Mycenae was one of the major centers of Greek civilization, a military stronghold dominated much of southern Greece. It sits on top of the hill and is a great way to view some of the old strongholds of Greek history. We then visited a town called Nafplion, this is an old beachside town that is where Athenians like to go on the weekend. It’s full of beautiful narrow streets, dozens of shops, restaurants and taverns. We enjoyed a nice lunch in a tiny restaurant and strolled the streets for quite a while. One of the highlights of our visit to Nafplion was going to the Palamidi Fortress, it’s a massive site which sits on a hill above the town. It was built in the early 1600’s and has what can only be described as a commanding view of the entire harbor and surrounding land. It made for great photos! Oh, and if you were strong enough – you could climb more than 860 steps from town to get to it. We were driven.
Two final notes on our trip to Athens. First is that I mentioned guides a few times and wanted to share that we have used AutoVenture (www.autoventure.com) for all our international trips. They have both guided tours and can provide private drivers/tours. We have used them so many times that I basically provide them with the transfers that I need (airport, train, etc.) to my hotel and they make all the arrangements. I also tell them which tours I want in advance. They arrange everything, send me an itinerary along with a cost and I pay for everything before I go! All I need to pay is tips for our drivers and guides when I am traveling. It is an amazing way to travel, and I know you might be thinking that it is super expensive but truly it is not when you look at the overall cost and convenience.
The second note is about whether or not I will travel to Athens again? Probably not, even though I enjoyed the sights. The city itself is spread out over a large area, and the main historic sites are all basically in one location in the city. And the overall feel of the city to me is that it is a bit rundown and needs help. Greece has been through a lot over the years, with a lot of economic turmoil and it shows in Athens. Don’t get me wrong, the Greek people were warm and amazing and the food outstanding as well, and outside of the city, the countryside is beautiful…but there are so many other places to go on our travel list, that Athens is probably a “one and done” for me! Not everyone will agree with that – but this is just my personal take.
*Please note that I am not compensated in any way for mentioning the tour company I use. We truly believe they are the best at what they do and have recommended them to many people over the more than 12 years that we have used them. I want you to know what works for me when I travel and they are a big part of it.
