Intro and Greensboro to Chicago
Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge Toronto and Exploring Toronto
Air Canada Executive First Suite Toronto to Istanbul
14 Hours in Istanbul
Aegean Airlines Business Class Istanbul to Athens
Hotel Amalia Athens and Exploring Athens (Part 1)
Exploring Athens (Part 2)
Athens Airport Lounges and Aegean Airlines Athens to Santorini
Anamnesis Luxury Spa Hotel and Exploring Santorini (Part 1)
Exploring Santorini (Part 2)
Exploring Santorini (Part 3) and Aegean Airlines Santorini to Athens
Holiday Inn Athens Airport and Aegean Airlines Athens to Milan
UNA Hotel Cusani and Exploring Milan
United Business Class Milan to Newark to Greensboro
Our first day in Athens was spent exploring the Acropolis, the New Acropolis Museum, and the Monastiraki area. Dinner at Oineas was excellent, and our hotel was tough to beat, with the amazing complimentary breakfast and fantastic location.
Directly across the street from the Hotel Amalia Athens is the National Gardens, a huge tranquil garden right in the middle of the city. After breakfast, we packed up our suitcases and left them at the front desk, since we’d be flying from Athens to Santorini that evening, and then we spent an hour or two wandering around the gardens, which are beautiful. Spanning 38 acres, the gardens are free and open to the public from sunrise to sunset:
After walking through the gardens for a bit, we walked back across the street, and stopped for lunch in at a small cafe on the block between Hotel Amalia and Syntagma Square. From there, we hopped on the metro (at Syntagma Station) and headed over to check out the Ancient Agora, a central gathering/meeting place in the 6th and 7th centuries BC. The agora had some great views of the Acropolis, but it was again very hot (about 90-95°F) walking around.
There is one large building that has been reconstructed, and is simply referred to as the South Stoa, which is believed to have served as a large covered portico:
Across the complex from the South Stoa was the Temple of Hephaestus:
The Ancient Agora is neat to see, but unless you’re a real historian, it does start to become lots of piles of rubble – really old and historic rubble, but not always the most exciting. It’s certainly worth a visit, but we didn’t spend nearly as long there as we did at the Acropolis.
From the Ancient Agora, we headed to the Central Market, which is quite a site to behold. Simply wandering through the maze of meats, seafood, vegetables, and every other food under the sun is certainly an experience. It was fun to shop around with the locals, and we picked up some local olive oil to bring back as souvenirs for family and friends:
After shopping for a bit in the market, we made our way back to our hotel to retrieve our suitcases. The metro in Athens is relatively clean and efficient, but it is poorly circulated. Especially in the heat of the summer, the stations aren’t much cooler than the outdoors (and with no breeze, they sometimes feel warmer). Some train cars are air conditioned, but some are not.
We made it back to our hotel around 5:00 pm. Our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:35 pm, but getting back to the airport would take an hour or so, and there are 2 lounges in the airport where we planned to have dinner. Since we were a bit hot, tired, and had seen most of what we wanted to in Athens, we headed to the airport a little early. The buses seemed to be slightly better air conditioned than the metro, so we opted to take the X95 bus back to the airport instead of the metro (even though the metro takes around 45 minutes compared to 60 minutes on the bus). Our 3-day tourist ticket allowed 1 ride in from the airport and 1 ride back out to the airport, on either the bus or the metro.
Athens is certainly a city filled with incredible history, and it is worth seeing for a few days, we were very much looking forward to heading out to the islands, where the beauty of Greece really shines. For us, 2 full days in Athens was the perfect amount of time.