Day 1:
We arrived at Athens International Airport (Eleftherios Venizelos) in the afternoon on our flight from London. After a rapid covid-19 swab test at the airport, we were on our way. Athens Metro Line 3 serves the airport and we took the metro to Syntagma Square (9 Euro/person). Our hotel (New Hotel, Athens) was only 5 minutes walk from Syntagma metro stop.
After freshening up, we decided to pick up our combo Acropolis tickets ($30 Euro for 8 sites over 5 days) from Gymnasium of Lykeion. We walked from our hotel to the National Garden.
We walked through the National Garden to Lykeion (Ancient Gymnasium). Greek philosopher Aristotle founded a school of philosophy here and many great philosophers like Plato and Socrates used to teach here. Other than the interesting history, there is very little to see here.
Next we walked for just under 1 km to Greek Parliament.
The Greek parliament is right next to Syntagma Square, the central square of Athens.
A lot of streets end in Syntagma Square and one among them is Ermou Street, lined with fashion stores like H&M, Zara and many others.
Walking along Ermou street we ended up at Monastiraki Square.
Close to Monastiraki are a couple of churches, Church of St. Eleutherios as well as Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary
Next we walked around the narrow streets of Psyri with quirky buildings.
It was evening by now and we decided to go to O Thanasis by Monastiraki for dinner.
We ordered a plate of Tzatziki, pita bread, a chicken gyro and a plate of chicken souvlaki. Other than the souvlaki which was just ok, everything else was very delicious. We ended up having a lot of Tzatziki and chicken gyros on our trip.
Day 2:
The Acropolis opens at 8:30 AM and we showed up early by the Theater of Dionysos entrance.
We walked up the hill slowly and arrived at Odeon of Herodes Atticus.
Walking further, we arrived at the entrance of the Acropolis.
The propylea (Grand Entrance) of Acropolis was amazing to see, with all the columns bearing the history of thousands of years.
The highlight of Acropolis is the Parthenon, the temple dedicated to Athena originally built just under two and half centuries ago!!
Opposite of the Parthenon lies the Erechtheion, a temple dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon.
We then descended downhill from Acropolis to Roman Agora.
Acropolis can be seen from many parts of the city including the Roman Agora.
From Roman Agora we walked over to Hadrian’s Library, included in the combo ticket.
Next we walked to Ancient Agora, commercial center of Athens during ancient times. This site is part of the combo ticket, just like the Roman Agora.
We were pretty tired with all this walking around town and so decided to have a lunch break. We made our way to Neoklassiko and picked up some dolemades, tzatziki and chicken gyros.
After lunch and some rest we walked from our hotel to Temple of Olympian Zeus (part of combo ticket).
The temple is a short walk away from Panathenaic stadium, the site of the first modern Olympics.
On the way back we stopped by Arch of Hadrian.
Having done enough sightseeing for the day, we went to have dinner at The Greco’s Project by Monastiraki.
Day 3:
We arrived late in the evening on our flight from Naxos. We took the Athens Metro Line 3 from airport to Syntagma Square. We were pretty tired and had an early flight out next day so just decided to have dinner and retire back to hotel.
We walked over to O Thanasis again for dinner. We ordered a Kebab plate, pita bread and some tzatziki.
Next day we took the X95 bus (Fare 5.5 Euro/person) from Syntagma Square to Airport as the metro is not operational that early.