After my arrival the previous day, I awoke on my second day in Athens in my little self-contained rooftop apartment at the City Circus Hostel. I looked out over the city and gazed at my destination: the Parthenon. I didn’t have time to mess around. One of the things you hear most about Athens is that it’s overrun with tourists. Maybe that’s more true in the summertime than in February when I was there, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I wanted to be there right when they opened at 8:00 AM.
I walked from my hostel to the site. It only took about 22 minutes and was a very pleasant walk through the quiet streets. Buying tickets for the Acropolis seemed a little bit daunting; there were a lot of options: skip-the-line, audio guide package tickets, timed tickets, etc. I just decided to walk up to the ticket gate and buy my ticket in person. I was the first person there when it opened at 8:00. About 5 minutes behind me was a group of three or four other people. It wasn’t until about an hour later that I really noticed an uptick in the number of visitors, but even then there were not many. The ticket to enter was only about €20, which I thought was very reasonable. I think there would have been a lot of reasons to get a guide to explain more of the history, but as I felt a little bit short on time and tend to be a little bit impatient with guides, I just decided to walk around and look at all the ruins on my own.
It was an extremely pleasant visit. The temperature was perfect, the views of the city were great, and, as I said, I felt like I had the place to myself. As far as Greek and Roman ruins go, I’m not always a fan. Sometimes I think they are amazing (e.g., Jerash in Jordan) and other times, if I have to do too much work to imagine what might have been there in the past (e.g., Carthage in Tunisia), I can find them underwhelming. The Acropolis was in the former category. The buildings that are there are still intact (for the most part) and some still have their original decorative carvings on the outside. It is amazing to think how long they have stood there overlooking the city (going back to the 5th century BCE). As impressive as they were, I’m not one to linger, so I probably spent about two hours there before I decided I’d had enough and headed over to the museum.
The Acropolis Museum is just at the base of the Acropolis, so it was the next logical stop. I know not everyone is a museum person, but even if you’re not, I think this is a museum worth visiting. It’s a beautiful modern building with lots of light and it’s filled with incredible artifacts and sculptures. Sure, not everyone gets excited about clay pots, but it’s hard not to be impressed with massive statues, many of which still feature incredible detail including some of the original paint. You can take pictures in most of the museum except in one area where the most impressive and ancient pieces are housed. You’ll have to use your imagination for those or Google them, but it’s truly astonishing. I took way too many pictures and am trying to maybe use something that I saw there as inspiration for a tattoo.
From the museum, I wandered back through the city, walking the streets and meandering my way over to the Central Market, which is a great place to go for fruits, nuts, and skinned goat heads. As far as markets go, it was OK, but I greatly enjoyed having coffee at Mokka, a cafe right by the market on Athinas St., which has been in business since 1923. They still make traditional Greek coffee where the coffee is made in a little pot, similar to Turkish coffee, but it’s heated in sand. Truly, I couldn’t tell the difference between it and Turkish coffee, but either way, it was delicious. I had that and a baklava and watched a bit of the street life before carrying on.
I wandered around some more and headed in the direction of the Hotel Grande Bretagne, where I visited the Alexander Cigar Bar. It is, I think, the only proper cigar lounge that I found in Athens. Maybe they don’t need one because smoking is so acceptable in public, but it was nice to find a little refuge. The bar was beautiful, everything you want in a cigar lounge, from dark woods and paintings to a fireplace and jazz music. They do sell some cigars there but they don’t require that you buy one. I smoked a cigar that I brought with me and had a Negroni. They even brought a little assortment of snacks to accompany the cocktail. I love any cocktail that comes with snacks. Truly, it was a little haven.
From there, I took the subway from outside the parliament buildings to the stop near the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (ΕΜΣΤ), for a bit of modern art. I think it was €10 to get in, and it was definitely worth it. It was one of those places that’s full of “weird” art. Interesting installations and video projections with lots of art inspired by political inequality, torture, and identity. I loved it.
I made my way back to the neighbourhood near my hostel. It was dark at this point; I ate another delicious vegetarian dinner with some magical potatoes and smoked a bit of shisha before calling it a day. It was an excellent day; the only downside, if I had to think of one, is that I didn’t really meet anybody. When I went for my coffees, cigars, and shisha, nobody really seemed that interested in chatting. I didn’t meet any other travelers in those places and the locals were, understandably, just content to be with their friends or themselves. But none of that bothered me; I was happy just to have a relaxing day of proper solo traveling.
If that was the end of my time in Athens, I would have been completely satisfied, but I had a third and final day yet to go. I had to do a little bit of research to come up with some additional things to do, but find them I did, including visiting the truly charming Anafiotika neighbourhood. But I shall save that for the third in my trilogy of Athens posts. Read on here.
