Travel Diaries – Athens, GR

Hi friends! The final piece of our Greece travel series – Athens! We were only in the city for less than 24 hours, so this will be a quick one but I still wanted to share the deets!

Arriving at Athens:

As I mentioned in my overall Greece blog post, all of our inter-island travels were via ferries. Our ferry from Mykonos to Athens was about 4.5 hours long, and was honestly one of our least favorite experiences on the entire trip.

We took Blue Star Ferries from Mykonos to Athens, and surprisingly it arrived quite on time, despite it being the first available one at 6:00am. That was about the only good thing about this ferry haha we boarded with passengers sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags and DEFINITELY not enough seating for the number of passengers they had on board. We somehow accidentally booked the ‘deck-lounge’ seating, and that is literally on an upstairs deck with very minimal indoor space…so that would’ve meant over 4 hours of sitting in windy sea weather. Could you imagine?! I would’ve had a migraine for days. Thankfully most of the ferries in Greece don’t actually check your ticket type vs where you sit (unless you purchase the VIP/business class seating, which we definitely should’ve done on this ferry), so we were able to sneak into a downstairs indoor area, and pull together a couple of chairs for Ronak and me to sit on.

We were so looking forward to sleeping for a few hours since it was going to be our longest and earliest ferry ride, but needless to say…we didn’t get much shuteye on this one. 🙁

Overall, whichever ferry you decide to go with, I would highly recommend booking your tickets to Athens from any of the islands as much in advance as possible. Since it’s pretty much a port for tourists coming in and out of Greece, these tend to book up mad fast.

Athens Hotel:

We stayed at Elia Ermou Athens Hotel, which most resembled a hotel we’d stay at here in the US. We enjoyed our stay here! It was clean, the staff was great, and our room was comfortable. They have a wonderful complimentary breakfast buffet that we got to enjoy on our last day. They also have an amazing rooftop bar/restaurant (where the breakfast is also served), that has amazing views of the Acropolis. We even took advantage of their in-house gym, and although some of the machines didn’t work, we were thankful to get a normal workout in after a week’s worth of Greek food!

The hotel is about a 20 minute drive from the ferry port, and about the same to the airport. We’d definitely recommend this hotel!

Athens Restaurants and Bars:

• Aspro Alogo – this super small family-owned restaurant was SO delish and the owner was one of the sweetest guys, ever. He was extremely busy when we went, and still somehow managed to fully set up a table and chairs for us on the sidewalk haha it was great, and we enjoyed the meal.
• Manouka Rooftop Bar – we stopped by here on our way back from the Acropolis, and honestly…we probably would’ve preferred to enjoy these views of the Acropolis while sipping on delicious cocktails from here the entire time haha. Highly recommend!
• CookieLand – yummy gelato! Great for desserts and ice cream.
• Elia Ermou Rooftop Bar & Restaurant – as I previously mentioned, the rooftop bar and restaurant in our hotel were amazing! You can still dine and grab drinks here even if you’re not staying at the hotel. Highly recommend!
• Babaji Indian Food – okay if you’re like us and are doing Athens at the end of your Greece trip, you *may* experience an overdose of Greek food (didn’t think it was possible!). We were honestly just craving anything other than Greek food on our last night, and saw a plethora of Indian food options in Athens, which we didn’t see on any of the islands, so we decided to give it a shot. It was decent and it hit the spot for us!

Athens Must-Do’s:

• Obviously, visit the Acropolis! However, how extensive you want to see it will be up to you – neither Ronak or I are really history buffs so we were perfectly okay with just walking by it from the outside and not doing a full tour (it was also VERY hot the day we went so that was also less motivating lol). But I have heard it’s super cool to see on the inside, so a tour like this one, this one, or even this one I think would be great!
• If you’re limited on time in Athens, but still want to hit up all the hot spots, maybe a hop-on-hop-off bus tour like this or this would be a great fit for you!
• **As previously mentioned with the ferries, whichever you choose to do, I’d highly recommend booking your tickets in advance! We knew we didn’t really want to see the Acropolis from the inside so we didn’t bother buying tickets in advance, but when we walked by – it was packed! And we got the sense that it’s always like that since Athens is pretty much a port for travelers coming in and out of Greece…so my advice would be to book in advance!**

Getting Around Athens

Unlike the islands, Athens is actually more established in terms of taxis and car apps! If you’re planning on visiting Athens, just make sure you have the Beat app downloaded and set up! Operates just like your Uber or Lyft app, but for Athens. 🙂 There were also a TON of taxis lined up by the ferry port when we arrived – quite the opposite of the islands! Finally, our hotel concierge was also easily able to flag down a taxi for us, as well!

Our Eat, Drink & Be Merry Recommendations:

Eat: Aspro Alogo

Drink: Elia Ermou Rooftop Bar & Restaurant

Be Merry: Visit Acropolis

I hope you found my quick Athens round-up helpful 🙂 be sure to check out my Santorini, Paros, and Mykonos island round-up posts as well. I hope all of these have been inspiring to plan a trip yourself! let me know in the comments below if you’ve been to Greece, or if you are planning your trip there now! 🙂

xo,

gopi

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