- Travel Sensei
Greece : Mesmerizing trip begins
We have a flag off!! Welcome to our journey to Greece mainland.
Heavenly beaches, an ode to the world’s history and encapsulating aura, is how we summarize Greece. It is this one place where we would like to spend at least every alternating autumn season for the rest of our life.
Day 0: Settling Down
We had done prior research and decided to book a place that was walkable distance from Athens’ historic soul (The Pantheon / Acropolis) and easily accessible through Metro. When we landed it was already dark, we obtained a Sim card (Vodafone Sim cards are economical and can be obtained from the airport) and boarded the metro to our stay location. Grocery shops, good restaurants were all nearby, so we had no trouble making food arrangements.
Day 1: Walking through History Boulevard
Athens art hub is within a 10-15km radius and there is a lot of walking engaged. Stay ready to be on your feet and decide places to explore which are in proximity depending on your walking strength. There is also another option to rent a bicycle.
The Acropolis of Athens is the center point for tourists as everything is built around it. It attracts tourists like bees to nectar, and its tickets can be bought online or through the tourist centers spread across the city. As a suggestion, do not wait to buy tickets right at the Pantheon or you will be spending more time in lines rather than enjoying what you came to see. To make it easier, get the tickets at multiple ticketing centers available around the Pantheon along with a map of historic places to see and mark before you begin as on every nook and corner there is a heritage site.
The complex Acropolis of Athens have multiple sites like the Theatre of Dionysus, Odeon of Herodes Atticus at the bottom ( it’s a beautiful sight from the top), Temple of Athena Nike at the entrance, and multiple temples like Hekatompedon Temple, Temple of Rome and Augustus, Eretteo on the periphery with the grandest Parthenon at the center.
Of all the Historical places, Parthenon sits atop the hill glaring at the center of modern history and where it all began. It has seen so many invasions, destruction events, and still, it survived. Its magnanimity can only be experienced when you are there, standing in front of it and trying to understand how it began and questioning how it was built. From the top of the Parthenon, you can see whole of the Athens city and a true amalgamation of past and present.
It is good to begin your day early as the crowd (huge, really huge crowd) generally reaches Parthenon an hour before noon so try to cover it before the crowd hits. To cover all the places and learn about them you will need more than a day and you are in charge of the planning committee.
Apart from Parthenon we also covered the Ancient Agora of Athens (It's Wonder Woman connection :P). In addition, we covered Hadrian’s Arch and the almighty Temple of Olympian Zeus.
Multiple restaurants around offer amazing delicacies as you walk through the history lane. Soulful music and people dancing around amplify your good mood.
We traversed around 20km that day and though we were physically tired, mentally we wanted to drink more of Greek History.
As we had planned for exploring Athens shoreline for the next day we booked a car and went back to our stay location by evening.
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