Athens and its Wonders

Jenn
Sep 11, 2024
5 min read

Here is a place yet unknown to us, and getting to know it was wondrous (and hot)!

Athens, the city named after the Goddess Athena, a place that had always been on the list, and the number one place S wanted to visit, has now been checked off.

We've been busy, dare I admit too much, so getting around to writing this entry has taken some time. Travelling with kids and blogging is time-consuming (this is why Scott's job is to jot down notes as we go along so I can refer to them when I finally write these).

Ok, Athens, let's focus on Athens where we stayed for three days! Before I pump out details, can I just say it's wild to be in a place where the city's subway casually passes past ruins between stops. The antiquity is everywhere, entry pass not always required.

Temple of Olympian Zeus and Hadrian's Arch

This was a quick visit and these two places are side by side. We visited these on our way to the Acropolis, which essentially warmed us up for what was to come. I was unable to get some good photos, as the temple is presently scaffolded for maintenance.

Acropolis and Parthenon

It's startling to see the Acropolis (the entirety of the hill which holds not just the temple, but also other remarkable ruins, including an ampitheatre) and the Parthenon (the temple). We're walking down the street, looking around, trying to catch some shade (dang it's hot, B suffered the most acclimatizing), making sure we're going the right way and then BAM, look to your right there it is! I wasn't expecting this. We have not been to many places where one of their world-known wonders is right there, in the middle of the city. It's remarkable and astonishing.

The climb was quite easy and gradual as there is much to visually ingest along the way. It's difficult to fathom the gravity of the labour, skill and engineering required to create such a temple and everything else as you ascend. Could that level of skill, using the tools of the time, exist today? I don't know. I also didn't know that the Acropolis was quite intact before it was significantly destroyed and/or burnt during a war in 1687. This is quite momentous and it's something I plan on learning more about.

Travelling to infamous locations in the Instagram era is definitely different. There was a family there dressed up in toga-like, white dresses, with laurel-leaf-type headbands getting a friend to take pics in ALL the angles. The poses, wow, full-on runway seriousness, mom once even longingly pointed to the heavens while facing the Parthenon, perhaps hoping Athena herself would descend from the clouds and photo-bomb the pic... It was a full-on iPhone photo shoot, and they would not move from that one spot where many people awaited get a pretty clear shot of the entire Parthenon. Eventually I got a shot with the kids and spent a hot 30-45 seconds doing it - I think, heh heh.

I have many, many Parthenon pictures from our visit there, but some of my favourites are from day 2 when we were walking from our rental apartment and through a park that, unexpectedly for us, led to superb views of the temple from afar. There were maybe 10 other people there. No, I don't know the name of the park, but this is one of those lucky travel moments one can stumble into, and I love them. This was a place where we could just absorb the place, chaos-free.

Overall impressions of our Acropolis and Parthenon visit: busy, but not as busy as it could have been, remarkable, beautiful, mythical, eye-catching, inspiring. And hot.

The Plaka and the Monastiraki Flea Market

The Plaka is the oldest area of Athens (it was the city of Athens) and it's at the base of the Acropolis. We went there on day 1. It is very touristy, but it is also quite charming and beautiful. We had our first sit-down meal in Greece (lunch) in the Plaka and it was delicious. The following day we jumped off the bus at a fabulous, very alive-looking plaza during the golden hour of the day, which led to the Monastiraki Flea Market. The plaza was a great place to soak in the vibe and sit, stroll, and people-watch. This is also where I caved in and bought a selfie stick (it's pink, it's all they had, and it works). I'm inexplicably anti-selfie stick, but taking selfies of us 4 with a normal length lady-arm and a sweaty hand and trying to squeeze all the sights in gets ridiculous.

The Temple of Poseidon

This was quite possibly our favourite part of our time in and around Athens, apart from the magnificent Parthenon.

On day three we hired a driver/guide to pick us up at 11 am and take us to the Temple of Poseidon, as well as to other lovely sights just outside Athens. This was extremely convenient, as we had to check out of our apartment at 11 and then had an overnight ferry to catch to Crete that same day. Being with a driver meant we had somewhere to put our bags (trunk of car), and could sight-see to our heart's content while not worrying about transportation or being on tour buses. Our driver was Kyriakos and he was easy-going, helpful and informative, I recommend! We were together for 8 hours and all went swimmingly.

Kyriakos drove us to some beautiful spots, including a gorgeous little church, a lake that was created by a cave that collapsed, and the winner of the day, the Temple of Poseidon. The temple, cause it's Poseidon's, is naturally at land's edge, overlooking the breathtaking Cape Sounion. From my understanding of Greek mythology (and according to S, the Poseidon expert), Poseidon is a very temperamental god. You can thank him for things like earthquakes and hurricanes. As such, this is sufficiently magnificent temple on prime waterfront real estate, befitting proper homage to a volatile god. Want to know more about how Poseidon holds grudges against mortals that insult him or don't pay sufficient homage? Learn about Odysseus' troubles after the Trojan war. We did in a podcast recently while driving around. Oof. Don't piss Poseidon off.

But let's talk about the actual Temple of Poseidon again. Is it terrible to say we liked it as much, dare I say more than the Parthenon? It could be a combination of factors: its wild, wind-swept coastal location atop a cliff, its relative remoteness, the presence of almost no people, the magnificent views... it was just wonderful, and a perfect place to visit on our last day in Athens.

We had a couple of final stops before saying goodbye to Kyriakos at the ferry terminal. He took us to Sounio Beach which lies at the bottom of the Temple. Of course we had to have a quick-ish dip in the Mediterranean (it was meant to be 30 minutes but the water was so nice, oops...). We then had a meal at an unassuming, delicious, family-run, seaside restaurant before departing again and finishing our day.

All the Other Things

There were many other lovely moments in Athens, such as going to the Acropolis Museum, walking past the Panathenaic Stadium (the stadium of the first modern Olympic Games), and running into a man in a plaza creating enormous bubbles in a plaza in the twilight.