Getaway Vacation to Greece: Athens

Athens is a huge city and, not knowing what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised. It was your typical European city, and reminded us a lot of Rome, with ancient ruins everywhere you turned, cute neighborhoods and unbelievable food. After accidentally sleeping until noon and missing our hotel’s breakfast (it was our first day in Europe after a looong flight from San Francisco), we did what what most other tourists were doing in Athens that day – we visited the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is perched up on the hill, overlooking the vast city below. The Acropolis was flooded with tourists and signs about each building’s restoration, and I now understand the history of it all is actually within the Acropolis Museum, which I will visit next time I’m there :)

The Parthenon

Ruins at the Acropolis

Views from the Acropolis

We used TripAdvisor’s offline City Guides (which I highly recommend! No data roaming necessary for these offline guides & maps) and found some great off-the-beaten-path type places including Filopappos Hill which offers great views of the Acropolis (below), but without anyone there! 

Views of the Acropolis from Filopappos Hill

We visited the some other ruins (below), always finding the Acropolis in the distance.

We meandered along the streets, finding ourselves at the National Garden (like Central Park). Upon our exit, we just so happened to catch the Changing of the Guard on on our way to Syntagma Square.

 We walked around the cobblestone streets and found ourselves in Monastiraki, Psiri and later in Plaka. These are cute little neighborhoods, all with their own charm, and all within walking distance.

We ended up having dinner in Psiri and it was one of the best dinners we had on our trip! I really wanted the Moussakka, but the waiter said that’s something tourists eat (what?!) and pushed us into getting a huge meat platter topped over “potatoes” (aka French fries) and pita bread. We had a Greek salad, just salad in Greece ;) It was just tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olives, feta and olive oil – no lettuce – not at any restaurant on our entire trip. It was amazing. Totally fresh, flavorful and so delicious that I’m salivating just thinking about it. Ahhh to be back in Greece!

Traditional Greek Salad

We did some after-dinner strolling through charming neighborhoods, and ended up back at our hotel's roof deck, with views of the Acropolis, all lit up at night. Despite having gotten up at noon, that's all the night had in store for us...it was off to bed so we could get up before dawn for our ferry to Mykonos!

Read up on the rest of the trip and our island-hopping adventures:

Mykonos
Santorini