The Perfect 5-Day Trip To Athens

I’ll start out by saying Athens is quite small, and if you are just planning on exploring the city

center, you can do this trip in 3 days. We just spent lots of time revisiting the same areas, having plenty of fun and goofing around along with plenty of leisure time for good food and getting lost (which led to some of the best places ever) and time for mistakes.

We flew in on EL AL direct to Athens. While EL AL is not known to be the cheapest, I have

found them to be the most reliable in wartime, with many other airlines canceling or getting

delayed last minute. Plus, due to being a FF flyer with EL AL, we were able to take a checked-in bag for free, which is always nice.

We stayed in The IHG Intercontinental Hotel, just about a half-hour walk to the city center. It was absolutely perfect. The food was heavenly, the staff was extremely nice, the rooms were

excellent, and it was one of my first 5-star experiences at a hotel as an adult. To be fair, due to my United Club card, it gives me complimentary platinum status, so that may explain the extra nice staff. Even a small issue with the toilet that we had, which did not really affect our stay much, they were nice about and offered us a complimentary massage, which we chose some complimentary fruit and grapes instead brought up to the room (Dionysus anyone).

The weather was quite cold and overcast our entire stay, so if you are someone who struggles with being outdoors in the cold, we would suggest either taking public transportation, the hop-on and off bus, or taxis to the city center every day. It’s just a 7–10 minute ride.

The first thing I recommend doing, especially if you’re into ancient history and want to visit the Acropolis and all the ancient sites in the city center area, is get yourself a city pass. Ours cost $89 each and included access to all 7 main ancient Greek sites, many museums in the area, and discounts on several brands and other attractions. It also included the hop-on hop-off ticket. If you do the math, it would have cost us over 200 euros for the amount of attractions we did if we did not do the pass. You can find it on Turbo Pass, City Pass, or purchase a daily attraction pass that allows one-day access to everything.

We landed at night and went to sleep immediately as we planned an early wake-up to get to the Acropolis.

Starting our day at 6:30 am, following advice, we booked it over to the Acropolis understanding it was best to be first in line. Despite what we were told, there were surprisingly few crowds, but here’s the catch and why you should still aim to be there first in line at 7:30 with pre-booked tickets or the Turbo Pass. We were in the off-season, it was mid-February, it was quite frigid outside and it was raining, and it was midweek. The number of sheer visitors there on Saturday midday would have likely involved waiting in line for over 2 hours. In general, the southern gate is a lot less crowded.

The Acropolis, also known as the Temple of Athena, was actually quite cool and majestic, but

the scaffolding which was helping in the repairs of it did somewhat take away from the

experience. We also saw the Temple of Nike, the goddess of victory. Looks like Nike has been destroying feet for a long time.

After about 90 minutes exploring the Acropolis and its surrounding areas, we got our fix and

headed over to the Museum of the Acropolis, where most of the artifacts found on the Acropolis were. While it was nice, I found it a bit dull. I do like museums and I do like history, but there’s only so much Greek statue lil’ private parts I can see before getting bored.

Afterwards, we went to the famous Syntagma Square, a square we would get to know every

corner of later in the trip for the famous changing of the guard. Greek soldiers dressed in

ceremonial clothing do an elaborate dance march ceremony every hour by the Tomb of the

Unknown Soldier (or the Tomb of the Lone Soldier, which is what we called it) and have some

impressive SL stability, end-range hip flexion, and overall lower-body flexibility.

We stopped by for lunch in Syntagma Square where we bought a whole chicken and ate it very protein-bro style. Turns out our chicken was probably a pigeon due to its size, and there was a surprising lack of pigeons in the square. Despite us going back to the place and verifying it was chicken, we to this day are still convinced we ate one of the square’s pigeons. May the gods of the pigeons forgive us. We went to another museum which probably burnt us out a bit from seeing artifacts, where Zach, my traveling companion, got us in trouble for trying to pose with Zeus kind of funny since Zeus was fully naked with his little pee-pee. Later on we came across the perfect pee-pee cover in the numerous sex shops a blue elephant to gift to Zeus.

Both of us being trainers, it was a very productive trip from a training perspective. We trained nearly every day in the fantastic hotel gym! Our first day was a Zach-style upper-body session.

Day 2.

Did not mention it yet, but the breakfast here was flipping fantastic, with a custom omelette

station and a huge variety of fresh eggs, cheeses, veggies, smoothies, drinks, cakes, and

donuts with so many pastries it was one of the best hotel breakfasts we have had so far!

I wasn’t feeling super well this day, so we did a pretty relaxing bus ride where we toured around a bit on the hop-on hop-off bus. Its ticket is included in our Turbo Pass to the city. While we did not use it much except for today (as we mostly preferred walking), it can save you heaps of money with a ride to the Acropolis every day as well as around Athens and tons of places in the city center with 4 different lines. We did some small attractions like Hephaestus’ Arch and in the afternoon headed back to the hotel for an early day end.

We found a fantastic Asian place which had some delicious fresh fish bowls, rolls, and SUSHI

Pizza. It was bomb lickety delicious like one of the best sushi's I ever had. I mean, who can

say no to deep-fried rice topped with fish and sauce? The taste was in my mouth for freaking

forever.

At some point on the first day we also bought a really cool cat-proof brass chess set, and

despite missing a piece or two, Zach gave me a quick chess lesson.

Day 3.

This was one of our coolest days yet. We started out the morning with a tour of the ancient

Greek stadium used in the ancient Greek Olympics and in the 2004 Greek modern-day

Olympics. It was one of the coolest things we did, and as an aspiring Olympic coach, I could not have felt more connected to our heritage.

We stopped by after to Zeus’ temple, which while mostly in ruins, was fairly cool to see and try to envision how big it once was. We went back after to the city center for a stop by the Museum of Illusions. While I was familiar with most of the exhibits from the Tel Aviv one, it was quite cool to see another one in a different country, and Zach had a blast taking pictures at all the different illusions.

Day 4.

We roamed the city a bit more and made our way to the Roman Agora, where we came across the most intact temple in Greek history which was nice to finally see a non-destroyed temple.

Feeling a bit better, we had already done handstands in the AM. At 4 we did one of the

highlights of our trip: a complete wine tasting, honey tasting, and oil tasting. The entire tour was about 1–2 hours, and we were both high on honey, wine, bread, and oil after, making the rest of our day rather enjoyable. We also came back with heaps of goodies for our loved ones and our friends. We explored the city a bit more and headed to a cool rooftop bar called A for Athens with a really nice bird’s-eye view of the Acropolis, and headed back home or what we started calling the hotel.

Day 5.

With our last day here and familiar with pretty much every street the city had to offer at this

point, we headed again to Syntagma Square to see the changing of the guard. This time being Sunday, there is a more elaborate ceremony with far more soldiers than normal. It was very crowded, but by sitting on a high wall with a prickly cactus in my back, I was able to see and film most of it and even use some of it for content.

After, we headed to the famous flea market known to only be open on Sundays. We did not see much different from what we already saw, but with nothing else to do or planned to do, we casually strolled around window shopping, enjoying all the eye candy, and even picking up some vintage CDs for my car at ridiculous cheap prices.

While we were recommended by the worker at the olive, bread, and wine tasting to hit up some sort of park near the beach, I was obsessed with finding costume parts for this upcoming Purim. After searching 2 different costume stores, everything was closed because DUH Sunday. Finally finding a cool place, as we were walking there we noticed the mountain top with a nice church on it which we had been seeing on the horizon was rather close. So after spending a good amount of time in the costume store only to discover that they actually rent costumes and not sell them, I bought myself a tattered ripped shirt which I would like to use as a pirate base or for many more years of costumes to come.

And we hiked the mountain. It was a short but very steep climb with fantastic views at the top, and we sat and had our last romantic candlelight lunch/dinner (not really) with some insane views. From there, we had about an hour walk to the hotel and once again, as we had already worked out that morning, workout led by Sean, Zach and I did some work and we called it a night.

Last day flying out:

We woke up really early to work out again before flying. The staff was extremely nice and

hospitable as usual, and overall the hotel gets 5/5 stars. We got to the airport early and EL AL nicely gave us lounge access. While the lounge was meh (as lounges which are not affiliated with specific airlines usually are), I got the good news in the lounge I WAS UPGRADED! Considering it was one of my first short-haul international upgrades, it was quite nice and exciting. I am writing this blog from my first-class seat on EL AL. Haha, to many more upgrades.

While I’m sure Zach will let me know things I missed, here is my second travel blog.

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