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Discovering Athens

Traveling with friends is always fun. Mostly my traveling group consists of 4-5 friends, but this time only one friend went with me to Athens, Greece. Girl time, ha ha. 😀

We wanted to run away from the rainy and windy weather and from our daily routines, explore new places, try out new food and in general – enjoy the life. So, we found cheap flight tickets from Eindhoven, Netherlands to Athens, Greece and decided to go on a journey to an unseen country.

In my opinion, Greece is a lovely destination to travel to especially during autumn because it is not as hot as during the summer time. Furthermore, traveling to well-known travel destinations during the season can be quite a big headache, due to the crowds, queues and so on.

Greece is located in Southeast Europe and is a famous travel destination, due to its history and ancient culture. Greece is the birthplace of democracy and many famous philosophers. The country has to offer a lot of attractions to see. In this blog entry I will cover some of them, which are located in Athens. 🙂

Attractions worth to see in Athens:

Acropolis

The Acropolis is a must see sight. You can see the Acropolis basically from every angle of the city. Wherever you go, you always see it. 🙂

Furthermore, while climbing up, you will see the Parthenon and other main buildings on the Acropolis hill.

Acropolis museum

Near the Acropolis, the Acropolis museum is located.

What I liked the most about the Acropolis museum is that, that under the building there are ruins, which you can enter and have a closer look.

Kerameikos

The area of Kerameikos was divided in two parts. The walls of the city of Athens divided the place. On one side, there was a cemetery and the other side was inhabited. 

When walking around you can see a lot of graves, ruins and turtles! Yes, there are a lot of them there. ^^

Ancient Agora and its area

In the Greek language the word “agora” means “a gathering place”. In ancient times, it was used as a marketplace and a place where politicians and other Athenian citizens could speak their mind freely.

Panathenaic Stadium

The stadium hosted the first modern age Olympic Games in 1896. The Panathenaic Stadium is the only stadium in the world, which is made out of marble.

First Cemetery of Athens

You may think that visiting a cemetery is not worth it or it can be even creepy. Believe me, the architecture is really breathtaking and there are so many magnificent monuments!

You can enter the graveyard freely when it is not closed.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

As its name suggests, the shrine was made for Zeus, who was considered the king of the Greek gods.

Lycabettus Hill

There are two ways to reach the top of the Lycabettus Hill. You can climb up with your own feet or use the funicular.

What we did, we took the funicular to the top, due to we wanted to save our energy. So, when going back, we decided to climb down.

On top of the hill, there is a small church and a restaurant with a nice view of it.

Philopappos Hill

On our last day of the trip, we went to Philopappos Hill to see the sunset. The view was very lovely and the atmosphere was romantic. Maybe that is why there were quite a lot of couples. 😀

Greek kitchen

Lina (my friend’s name) and me, we wanted to try out the traditional Greek kitchen. So, we decided to go to O Thanasis restaurant. The food was so delicious that we went there a couple of times. Ha ha. 😀

We fell in love with the Greek kitchen. We tried out chicken Souvlaki, Moussaka, Greek salad and more. Very delicious!

Souvenirs

As everywhere, there are various kinds of souvenirs you can buy. In Athens souvenirs vary from T-shirts to fridge magnets or bracelets or even ancient Greek helmets and more.

I have bought some of the magnets with olive oil soap. Pretty useful and a lovely souvenir.

Useful Athens travel tips

  • While traveling, despite the location, it is always good to keep the money not in a single place, but in a few. Moreover, we saw a lot of people carrying their backpacks in front of them and so did we. When there are big crowds you never know when you can be the victim of pickpockets.
  • While crossing the streets in Athens, you need to be very careful. Even if the green light is on, it does not mean that it is safe to cross the road. You need to take a closer look if there are no cars coming your way. Sometimes they drive like crazy. 😀
  • I don`t know about the other Greek places, but in Athens, more or less they understand English and we had no problems while communicating.
  • There is an easy access from the Athens airport to the city via metro or a bus.
  • We had no problems using the metro. The metro stations are written in Greek and in the Latin alphabet, so it was very handful.
  • Likewise, a lot of informational signs are written in Greek and in the Latin alphabet in Athens.
  • There are some areas in Athens which are better to avoid during the nighttime, especially for women, such as Omonia, Monastiraki and others.

Other pictures from Athens

Some pictures from the plane

While I was still able to see the land, I took a couple of pictures. Moreover, took some photos of the clouds as well. They look very fluffy, like a cotton candy. ^^

Sorry for the quality. Pictures are taken with my phone. 🙂

A toast

Having a toast to our next travel destination Vienna, Austria.

Final words

Next time, if we will travel to Greece, I would like to travel to the Greek islands. I have heard that the islands differ quite a lot from the mainland and I would like to explore this matter if it is true or not. 🙂

As always, a big thanks for dropping by and until the next week!

With love,

NaO.

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