We were super excited to start our 10 day trip to Greece - the land of Greek god, goddesses and good food. Exploring ancient city of Athens and then heading towards the chic modern Greek Island of Santorini was on our agenda. In this post we will explore the ancient world of Greece and how we planned our trip around it.
We reached Athens airport very late night and headed straight to the city center of Athens. We stayed at an airbnb near to the city center as we had planned not to rent car and to take Uber everywhere in this old city. You can get very cheap accommodations with airbnbs in Greece. The city has somewhat lost it's charm and now is very run down with graffiti and traffic, and you can see it in most of the parts. Its easy to take metro around the whole city, if you prefer public transport.
After a good nights sleep, we stepped out in the sunshine country to enjoy our first Greek meal at a local restaurant nearby. You will find many small food joints and bakeries around that serve quick bite-sized food or even snack items that you can savor throughout the day. We headed to the famous Plaka district post-lunch. Situated very near the world famous Acropolis footsteps, you get a great view of Acropolis and its ancient temples while walking down the streets or dining at one of the many outdoor sitting restaurants. Plaka has a village feel, with narrow cobblestone streets lined with tiny shops selling jewelry, clothes and local ceramics. Its a beautiful neighborhood, and good to spend the evening. Our host, suggested us to go to a nearby hill, Filopappou Hill, which is good for hikers to go up a small hike and get great night views of Acropolis and city of Athens. The hill is closer to Plaka and has The Pnyx spot, where there were good rooftop restaurants for dinner.
Next day we headed to a day long tour to Delphi with a local tour group - Key Tours. While visiting Delphi, we also wanted to visit Meteora, which is further north of Delphi. Meteora has great rock formations and largest Greek Orthodox monasteries built on top of these steep hills.
While going to Delphi we took a quick stop at monument of Leonidas (Remember 300 movie??) at Thermopylae.
Next was, Temple of Apollo at Delphi. It takes a couple of hours to visit this spot. In the summer time, it gets very hot in day time and there is not much of shade around so be prepared with caps and plenty of water, accordingly. Our tour guide on the bus kept sharing elaborate stories with historical facts and anecdotes all along the journey. We really enjoyed that part of the tour where all of us were listening to his stories and great discussions sparked amongst fellow travellers, while road tripping between the spots.
One thing we missed here was the Delphi town. It wasn't included in our tour, but we crossed through it and loved it from is first look. A small little town with its own charm, cobbled narrow streets and little bistros on the way made it very attractive. Again our guide informed us, it was mostly for ski resorts for skiers heading to Mount Parnassus. If you plan to drive to Delphi, this is a good town to get some lunch around and watch views of snow clad mountains.
As the sun was setting in, we reached our final destination for the day - Meteora. The whole first look of Meteora was astonishing - the huge rock formations with a backdrop of sunset colors was creating a mystical atmosphere of calmness and serenity that was engulfing us. A long tiring journey ending with such peaceful vibes, made us more inquisitive for what lies ahead of us the next day. Early morning we hopped in the bus to Meteora, a world heritage site that perfectly blends nature's grandeur with history, architecture and humans desire of divinity.
Our first stop was at Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron, which was primarily for the monks and is the biggest and the oldest one of them all. There are lots of steps to be climbed to witness the views and enjoy the serenity up on these majestic rocks. Following that was St.stephen's Holy Monastery, this was typically for nuns only back in the days. This is easier to access and very convenient for many tourist who can't do the massive steps in other monasteries. Visitors are allowed only on certain days of a week and in day time only, since there are still some monks and nuns residing in the monasteries. Checking those details and planning accordingly is advised, all in all it was definitely worth the long trip.
Later we headed back straight to Athens after visiting the monasteries in Meteora.
In evening we headed to flea market at Monastiraki square in Athens for a quiet dinner.If you are in Greece you need to try world famous Greek yogurt and Greek coffee locally. We started our day with oldest greek yogurt shop - Stani - for brunch before heading towards Acropolis.
Climbing up top to Acropolis is a bit of a walk, do keep the water and hats handy if going in peak summers. There are plenty of sites to explore on top, if possible try to rent audio tour to understand history behind these magnificent monuments.
We went to Acropolis museum after that which has quite a lot of ruins of Acropolis preserved and well kept. On the last day in Athens city, we visited the Olympic stadium - Panathenaic Stadium. We spent around half a day exploring the stadium and nearby ruins open for public viewing.
The food was great at all places, had good options for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Local travelwise, Uber was good for Athens.
We really loved our time in mainland Greece and definitely it now has special place in our memories.
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