CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

May 22, 2023 — This part of my trip was not actually completely in Athens! Today, I took a day trip on the bus to Cape Sounion. In case you don’t know, Cape Sounion is the home of the Temple of Poseidon and sits on top of a cliff in Sounio, a little town about an hour and half out of Athens. Poseidon is one of my favourite Greek gods (thanks, Percy Jackson), so I was really looking forward to this!

I got up, had breakfast, and then headed out to the bus stop, which was a couple subway stops and a bit of a walk from where I was staying. I was following directions given by a blog that I found online since there wasn’t much information about how to get to Cape Sounion from more mainstream sources (i.e. Google Maps). Find the blog post I followed here.

I have a few additional tips for visiting Cape Sounion:

• When you get to the corner, look for the little bus waiting area canopies. That’s the area where you will be getting on the bus.
• It’s quite likely that there will be other people waiting too and I have to say that the KTEL (public bus service) staff are excellent: they directed the group to the appropriate stop for Cape Sounion. They may not look like KTEL employees, but follow the directions anyway. They’re right.
• If no one does direct you to the right canopy, look for the writing on the top of the canopy that says, “Cape Sounion.” One of them does, and this is where you will get picked up.
• You can find the Cape Sounion bus schedule on the KTEL website for Athens. It’s completely accurate.
• You need cash to pay for the bus to Cape Sounion. Make sure that you find an ATM well before you need to get on the bus to avoid rushing around looking for one like I did.

I got on the 10:30 bus, paid for a round trip ticket (allowing me to take any bus returning to Athens that day), and we arrived at 12:15. It’s a stunning drive out to Cape Sounion, especially once you get by the water. Sit on the right-hand side of the bus (facing the driver) for the best views out your window on the way there.

The drive was supposed to take about two hours but, as you can see, we arrived a little earlier than planned. I had enough time to see the temple, read all the signage, take a nice walk around, have lunch, and then get back on the bus at 1:45pm. I believe the next bus that afternoon would have been after 3:00pm, so I was quite pleased with the time afforded us and really didn’t feel the need to stay any later.

One caveat to that: there is also a temple to Athena a little walk away from the Temple of Poseidon. If you plan to visit the temple to Athena as well, then you may want to budget more time.

I got back on the bus for 1:45 and we started the drive back to Athens. Traffic was thicker heading back into the city and we arrived at the stop a little before 4:00pm. Unfortunately, I was feeling a little icky by the time we arrived (that does sometimes happen to me when I’m on a long bus or car journey) and took some time to lay down in the room when I returned. I watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother and, feeling better but not feeling like going crazy for dinner, I went and got McDonalds for dinner. (Hey, sometimes you just gotta go to what you know.)

I watched a few more episodes of my show while I ate, then video chatted with my mom back home and we even did a Disney group watch for a couple episodes of the show.

Finally, I headed to bed for a good night’s sleep.

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