Athens

We spent 2 weeks in Athens exploring this wonderful city. We met up with friends there who had already been in Athens for a couple of weeks and had scoped out all the best street food places: the best spinach and cheese pie, the best Bougatsa (custard pie), the best Loukoumades (donut like fried dough) and the cheapest happy hour beer (3 Euros).

City Scenes

We spent most of our time in Athens walking around the city and eating along the way 😋. I love how the Acropolis is the highest thing and you can see it from almost anywhere. I also love how there are very ancient ruins dotted everywhere around the downtown.

Museum

We also spent a couple of hours in the Acropolis museum. It was really interesting and had many of the original items from the Acropolis housed there so they wouldn’t get destroyed by the elements (whereas some of the items on the actual Acropolis are replicas). It also had several information panels explaining the history of Athens and the Acropolis.

Acropolis

We were lucky enough that on our last weekend in Athens, it was an EU cultural weekend, and the entrance to most of the sites in Athens were free. So, we visited the Acropolis and Ancient Agora on this weekend and saved ourselves 160 Euros!! We arrived at the ticket office for the Acropolis at 8 am and the line went on for more than a block 😲 We thought we were going to have to wait several hours, but it only took about 10 minutes and we were in.

Ancient Agora

Since the Agora was free too, we decided to visit it. We had already seen most of it from outside of the fence as we had walked around it several times just while exploring Athens. But, we went inside and had a closer look at the restored market building and some of the other ruins.

Concert

One night we went to a concert that our friend organized tickets for. It was located at the Odeon of Herodus which is a Roman theatre (completed in 161 AD) at the base of the Acropolis. Our friend purposfully bought the “bad” tickets so that we could have a view the Parthenon. It was an amazing concert – music from the mediterranean with a focus on Turkish and middle easter music played on ancient instruments (most of which I’ve never hear of before). We weren’t supposed to take photos, but I snuck in a couple anyway.

Our Apartment View

Our apartment was located at the top of the hill near the Gypseli area of Athens. The apartment had a nice garden with a pomagranate and fig tree, and a grape vine. But the view was incredible – especially at sunset.

Up next: Greek islands