48 Hours in Athens

Everyone we talked to made it quite clear that we were insane to visit Athens in August, the month when everyone who knows anything clears out of the blazing hot city and heads for the islands. But we weren’t going to go all the way to Greece and not visit the home of all our favorite Greek gods that we’d spent the last month learning about, so we decided we’d be fast and efficient with a quick 2 day hit of Athens ‘Best-of’, heatwave be damned.  Our first (of what will undoubtedly be many) flight delay on the way out of Edinburgh meant we landed in Athens at 12:30 in the morning, bleary eyed and tired with a very unamused Huxley and a rockstar Holden who carried Huxley’s bag the entire way through the airport and tried to make games of racing flight attendants and other passengers through the seemingly endless walkways in an attempt to cheer up his over-tired little brother. We finally collapsed into our hotel at nearly 2 am, setting ourselves up for a very successful next 24 hours 🤣.

Three days before we arrived, Athens was averaging 105 degrees, but somehow the gods were with us (or we just brought a little England along) and we woke up to giant thunderheads and totally reasonable temperatures outside. After a lot of coffee and a giant breakfast of Greek yogurt and honey, croissants and pancakes and eggs and feta from the rooftop of our hotel, looking straight up at the Acropolis, we finally pulled ourselves together to venture out and explore. It doesn’t matter how tired you are, it’s impossible not to get excited when you’re starting at the Acropolis all morning! We took about 10 steps outside and Zeus unleashed all his fury, soaking us to the bone with the most torrential downpour we’d experienced all summer. Crested Butte Thunderstorms had nothing against this!  Back inside we ran, screaming, laughing, wringing out our hair and our clothes to reassess our days ambitions. Museums seemed to be the answer, so we headed to the Archeological Museum. It is incredible, seemingly endless, filled with relics that Will and I could have spent hours pouring over, but after about 25 minutes the boys attention spans were cooked so we invented ‘speed museum-ing’ which they found highly entertaining, stopping to look at every sword and piece of gold we came across.

The rain was still pouring so we headed on to the Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, a tiny museum, off the radar of the normal tour stops, but was suggested to us by an old family friend who had spent years in Athens on Archeological projects. It was perhaps the highlight of our time in Athens. We spent nearly 3 hours in the tiny space, diving into the endless array of operating models of ancient inventions, trying, learning and totally geeking out. I’ve always thought of the ancient Greeks when it comes to philosophy, art and science, but had no idea the complete depth of inventiveness when it came to the bolts and nuts, gears and rules, pulleys and belts, hydraulic controllers and more that we take for granted now. There was the first ever robot, designed to pour wine for guests at esteemed dinner parties, an early ‘cinema’ showing beautiful stories of battles and myths, the most ingenious first clock that used the channeled flow of a river to keep track of hours, days, months and years. There was the first doorbell and the first alarm clock, an early fire hydrant and pressurized hose, not to mention ‘chain’ powered crossbow. A ‘guided museum’, the docents were as incredible as the inventions themselves, taking the time to explain and show how each invention worked, letting the kids get their hands dirty and try things out themselves. One of the guides even spent 45 minutes teaching the boys to play Trias, the ancient Greek version of Tick Tack Toe, and gifted them a little travel board that now lives in my purse and graces every dinner table we sit down to, keeping the boys endlessly entertained and engaged while they wait for our food to arrive and Will and I drink wine. We’re pretty sure he should be made a saint.  All this is to say, if you find yourself in Athens, you have to, have to, have go to the museum of ancient technology

The next day was dedicated to seeing all the big sites; the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the Acropolis Museum and the Temple of Poseidon. Again at the suggestion of our old family friend, we hired a guide through Greek Mythology Tours that specialize in kids tours with an emphasis on Greek Myths and Percy Jackson. We’re by no means die hard Percy Jackson fans, but we have been reading and listening to the books over the past months and have to say, they were a pretty engaging way to begin introducing the boys to Greek mythology (along with the D’Aulaires book of Greek Myths as our bedtime stories) and it was shocking how much the boys had actually retained. The guide was the second-best thing we did in Athens as she was engaging, brilliant and knew exactly how to talk to the boys, drawing out their interest and sharing the most juicy tidbits of the history and architecture with them. In the afternoon they took us out to the Temple of Poseidon, about 1.5 hours from Athens in Cape Sounion, with a stop at Lake Voulmengi along the way. I am so grateful to them for introducing us to Lake Vouliagmeni as we never would have come across it on our own! A thermal fed lake in the heart of the Athenian river is an awe inspiring lake, surrounded by imposing rock walls with a labyrinth of underwater tunnels and caves. The waters are consistently replenished by both the sea and the underground thermal springs so it is perfectly warm, clean and captivatingly beautiful. Surrounding the lake are cabanas and lounge chairs reminiscent of a fancy hotel, with cocktails and tasty bites served up lakeside. Again, if you find yourself in Athens, do yourself a favor and go! We could have stayed forever, but we had sunset visit to the Temple of Poseidon (the boys favorite God) to catch, so on we went in our whirlwind day.  The sunset and the temple were equally beautiful and a perfect contrast to the craziness of the city; we even found a tiny restaurant nearby to gorge on platters of grilled vegetables, honey baked feta and kebabs and the boys discovered the brilliance of gyros, setting off an exciting quest to find the best one, which we are still on. We got back to our hotel at 10:30 that night sufficiently stuffed, exhausted, filled with tales of gods and goddesses, and completely smitten by our whirlwind visit to Athens.  

Random Recs

We loved the ATHENSWAS design hotel for it’s location and breakfast situation and would highly recommend it again.

Visit Lake Vouliagmeni! We did it as an part of our Percy Jackson Tour day but if we had longer in the city I’d spend an entire afternoon there.

Highly recommend the Percy Jackson Tour. We had our guide minimize the amount of time actually talking about Percy and focus on the greek mythology instead, but they did an incredible job of bringing the acropolis and the acropolis museum to life.

We had a great dinner at Oikeio-nothing fancy but delicious and authentic.