CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

May 24, 2023 — My day started pretty nice and early as I woke up and got changed so that I could leave the hostel and walk about 100 feet to the Athens Walks tour office.

I booked a visit to the Acropolis/Parthenon and archaeological museum with Athens Walks through Viator on a recommendation from a friend I met on my first night in Athens. We had to meet for the tour at 8:30am on a fine day in Athens (it was beautiful outside) and the tour left at 9:00am once we were all gadget-ed up with packs and earbuds to hear our guide’s commentary. The group was pretty small (the tour itself never places more than 18 people with one guide), so we had an easy go moving around. This is the first tour I’ve ever taken with earbuds to hear the tour guide and I am a massive fan since I’m pretty sure I have hearing loss in both my ears and sometimes have a hard time hearing guides.

The Athens Walks office had a quote on their wall:

An unexamined life is not worth living.

— Socrates

I wanted to add that here because I relate to that so much; it really relates to what I’m doing in these blog posts and in my personal travel journal. I think that living your life under self-examination is so important because if you don’t reflect on where you’ve been and where you are and where you’re going, then how can you expect to grow from your experiences and become a better version of yourself?

Back to the tour, though: once we got going, we started the day at the museum. (We could do the museum and the Acropolis/Parthenon in any order and no one really had a preference; our guide decided to start with the museum because it gives a lot of context and because the crowds are so much smaller in the earlier hours of the day.)

The museum itself holds many important artifacts from Ancient Greece, including pieces from the Acropolis and Parthenon, and is actually built on top of ruins from Ancient Greece that were excavated a number of years ago. I believe our guide may have said that they were ruins of an Ancient Greek mansion or some other such building. Many parts of the floor are see-through so that you can walk on top of these ruins and peer down at them.

After about an hour and a half at the museum, we had a small break and I got a coffee up on the terrace. And the coffee was so good.

When we reconvened, we started our walk up to the Acropolis and the Parthenon. It was a very leisurely stroll and we stopped frequently to talk about various archaeological treasures on the hill aside from the Parthenon. There was once a theatre here, which was dedicated to Dionysus and was used for over 1,000 years. Another major excavation on the hill is the music hall, which actually dates from Roman times and used to be covered with a wooden roof. It’s so grand in size and was built in the 2nd century A.D. (C.E.). The seats were restored in the 1950s and it’s actually still in use for music festivals today. We even saw a turtle on the way up!

Then, finally, we headed up the last bit of the path to the top of the Acropolis and the Parthenon. You know how you’re never quite expecting anything to be as magnificent and awe-inspiring as you think it will be? This was. Seeing the Parthenon was just incredible.

Once we made it to the top of the hill, our tour was over and we had as much time as we wanted to wander about and see the ruins, since the Acropolis was designed to be a major centre and showpiece for the city. Honestly, going with the tour was an excellent way of doing the Acropolis because we got so much context and information related to the site that I certainly wouldn’t have gotten if I’d gone on my own. The trip up was leisurely and full of interesting stories and getting to wander around the site after was incredible. I highly recommend checking out a tour to the Acropolis on your trip to Athens; check out the the one I did! (Note: This is an affiliate link; it does not affect the price of the tour for you but I will earn a small commission if you book your tour using this link. If you’d like to support me, please consider doing so!)

I wandered down the hill after touring the site a little bit and examining all the angles of the Parthenon and found myself in an area of Athens that I’d been a few days previous to see the Temple of Hephaestus. I thought I might get lunch there but decided against it ultimately and headed back to Monastiraki Square instead. I had lunch at a nice little place where I also had a nice conversation with one of the waiters. I must say, I never really got tired of Greek food and even now, I miss it. It’s just so good.

After lunch, I treated myself and got three different flavours of ice cream. Overkill? Nahhhh.

It was looking like rain when I left the ice cream place and I headed back to the hostel. My instincts were right — it rained for most of the rest of the day.

Late that evening, I got a gyros plate from the place right around the corner from my hostel, a bag of the popcorn brand that I really enjoyed in Greece from the convenience shop just across from the hostel, and chilled out a while longer before going to sleep that night.

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