Our flight to Athens at 6am was super easy - I wish all our flights had been this painless! Well, navigating the airport was painless (because we were the ONLY departing international flight) but we were pretty tired from our early wake-up. We made it to our hotel, the Victory Inn, before 8am and (to our great surprise!) they were able to give us our room right away! So we both decided to take a nap before setting out to see Athens.
By the time we were both ready to re-start our day, both of us were starving so we headed to O Thalamis, the first restaurant we saw advertising Greek Salads and Gyros. And that’s exactly what we got. And it was delicious – so happy to be back in Greece!
After lunch we decided to walk off our big meal and explore some of the areas around the Acropolis. We couldn’t go inside because the park was closed – it was Orthodox Easter on Sunday so a lot of things were still closed on Monday – but we were just as happy to lazily stroll around all afternoon.
Strolling through the National Gardens.
The Zappeion, a building in the middle of the National Gardens.
Looking in at the Temple of Zeus…we’ll return another day when it’s open.
Halfway up the Acropolis, looking out on Athens.
Later in the afternoon, tired of walking, we settled at a café and sampled Ouzo, Greece’s version of Raki, before grabbing some Greek food to take back to our hotel. We never really woke up from our morning naps so we called it an early night in order to rest up for the rest of the week.
We woke up on Tuesday to sunny skies so we set out for Athens’ main tourist attraction: the Acropolis. It was pretty busy with other tourists but we really enjoyed walking around some of the oldest ruins we’ve seen so far on our trip!
View from the top – looking down on Athens from the Acropolis.
Got another couple to take our photo when there wasn’t a huge tour group blocking this great vantage point. (Then I returned the favor for about four other couples!)
It’s not the Parthenon, but this other temple dedicated to Athena is still very impressive.
After about an hour we walked down the hill to a nearby restaurant and had a relaxing couple hours munching on mezze plates and enjoying the view from our table.
Not a bad table for lunch!
Full of food – our light lunch turned out to be not-so-light! – we strolled over to Ancient Agora, a village at the base of the Acropolis. It had a lot of really well-preserved buildings that we spent an hour or so wandering through.
It’s not on a hill overlooking Athens, but the Temple of Hephaestus is in much better condition than the Parthenon!
A church in Agora.
Looking up at the dome inside the church.
We’ve seen a lot of columns since we’ve been here – reminds us of our elementary school lessons on Doric, Ionic and Corinthian styles.
We took a break from the ruins for the rest of the afternoon. Sarah decided she needs some more cold-weather clothes for the rest of our time in Europe so we walked around the local shops in search of another sweater and some boots. Once I was tired of shopping (Sarah has endless energy for it!) we stopped at Heteroclito for a glass of wine then moved to Karamanlidika for dinner. Sarah found the latter on TripAdvisor and we were so happy that she did – the food was excellent, a must-do when in Greece!
Sarah whipped out the camera and caught this pigeon mid-flight in front of a church on our walk to dinner.
This morning it was a little cloudy so we decided to spend some time in Athens’ famous museums. We grabbed cappuccinos and headed for the new Acropolis Museum. This was only opened a few years ago so Sarah hadn’t seen it when she was here in 2010. It is a beautiful building located right on top of some ruins – but built in a way that didn’t disturb the ground layers – so when we weren’t looking at the ancient statues we could look through the glass floor at old building foundations. Definitely worth a visit to learn more about the Acropolis and see some of the statues that have been removed.
After the museum we headed to Falafellas for some street food. The falafels were great, and these guys added eggplant to their pitas…something we haven’t seen before with falafel, but definitely a solid addition! Sarah decided to do some more shopping because she didn’t find everything she needed yesterday so I headed back to our hotel for some rest – I came down with a little cold and wanted to try to nip it in the bud while it was still in its early stages.
We met up for dinner at I Kriti, but weren’t really impressed. Hard to compete with some of the excellent meals we’ve had in Athens so far! Tomorrow we’re taking a ferry to Hydra, a nearby island, to explore somewhere new. The weather forecast looks good so hopefully it’s smooth sailing!