Should we visit Athens? Part 7 – A suggested plan

Introduction

This post is about a suggested plan to visit Athens, Meteora and a Greek Island. This suggested plan facilitates the identification of our accommodation and costs the holiday, thereby enabling a final decision on the nature of our visit. You can catch up with Parts 1 – 6 of our posts about “Should we Visit Athens? here.

Recapping our research

To inform this suggested plan I have summarised the outcomes of the first six posts.

Part 1 – Deciding on a framework

This first post enabled us to determine an initial framework shown below:

  1. Athens tours: Are there any interesting Athens tours – photography? Food? Historical? Street Art?
  2. Historical Sites: What are the important monuments or landmarks we wish to visit?
  3. Concerts: What theatre and/or concerts are available to attend?
  4. Food: What restaurants cater for celiacs?
  5. Markets: What markets can we visit in Athens?
  6. Greek culture: Can we adequately experience this in Athens or should we travel to a smaller village? What are the key features of Greek culture?
  7. Day Trips: Meteora? Ancient Delphi?
  8. Travel: How do we get to Athens; How do we get around Athens?
  9. Accommodation: Where can we stay? Are apartments in the city centre affordable?
  10. Time: Is September or October a good time to visit? How long do we need?

Part 2 – Athens Tours

Research for the second post meant we could identify a selection of tours as shown below.

Athens and the Acropolis

https://www.fantasytravelofgreece.com/tours-in-greece/athens-afternoon-tour

This tour meets our needs: it is scheduled for the afternoon (which means the morning is free to take dawn photos); and uses a bus.

Photography

https://www.city-discovery.com/greece_athens_tours/tour.php?id=3608

Only one person will attend this so it needs to be short – this three-hour tour meets that criteria. A photographic tutor also conducts the tour.

Cooking lesson

http://www.athenswalkingtours.gr/Cooking-Lessons

Only one person will attend (not the photographer!).

Greek culture and markets

http://www.athenswalkingtours.gr/private-walking-tours-athens

Most of the formal tours start at 1000 and take four hours. We’d like a personalised three-hour tour that starts earlier. Say between 0800-0900. This group should be able to accommodate us.

Meteora

https://www.visitmeteora.travel/en/ (Specialist Meteora site)

I’ve wanted to visit Meteora ever since we watched “Francesco’s Mediterranean Voyage” which featured these cliff-top monasteries.

Village

We would really like to visit an authentic Greek village. We haven’t decided yet, but it needs to be reasonably easy to access. Perhaps we can combine an island trip with an authentic village experience?

We’ll study Matt Barrett’s Greek Island Synopsis: http://www.greektravel.com/greekislands/

Part 3 – Cultural Themes

The focus of this post was our desire to focus more on Greek culture. Consequently, we could overlay Greek cultural themes with our interests, which provided a refined list of cultural themes.

  1. Food and Wine, Cooking and Recipes, Cafés, Markets
  2. Architecture (including Churches)
  3. Traditions and Customs (Religion, Markets, Ports, Sea, Village, Concerts)
  4. Geography (Athens, Meteora, islands) and Products (What’s grown; What’s manufactured)
  5. History (Athens and Acropolis; Meteora; Delphi, Museums)

Part 4 – Activities to explore Greek Culture

This post combined our interests, identified tours, and cultural themes to refine our list of tours. Hence, we arrived at a list of essential and optional tours for Athens.

Essential Tours

  1. The Acropolis (3.5 Hours; EUR 65)
  2. Athens Highlights (4 Hours; EUR 49)
  3. Athens Food Tour (4 Hours; EUR 65)

Optional Tours

  1. Cooking Lesson (4 Hours; EUR 77)
  2. Street Art (4Hours; EUR 60)

Note: prices are per person

Our eBook

As you will deduce from the promotion below, we did indeed go to Athens, and we produced an eBook about our trip!

Our eBook synopsis:

We discuss our six days in Athens in this eBook (13,200 words, 23 photographs). We had an additional day each for arrival and departure. Our Athens eBook is different from our previous eBooks in that we focus on observed cultural aspects rather than a day-by-day account of our activities. However, we do have a chapter that presents our schedule and activities.

Our impressions of Athens are drawn from the walking tours (over 16 hours) we joined and our experience of self-catering in a predominantly local neighbourhood.

Therefore, we have chapters that focus on our living experience, and our experiences related to our private food tour, neighbourhood tour, and the tours of the Acropolis Museum and Acropolis. Other topics we discuss relate to issues raised during our visit, such as Greece and the European Union and The Greek Economic Crisis.

Never been to Athens? Oh, you must – we did!

Our eBook: Six Days in Athens can be found on:

Six Days in AthensAmazon Links:

Kindle US || Kindle UK || Kindle AU || Kindle CA

Smashwords Link: EPUB

Smashwords also distributes to:

Apple Books

Odilo || Scribd || Gardners Extended Retail

Kobo || Barnes and Noble

Part 5 – Meteora

We investigated a trip to Meteora in this post and chose a trip.

Our pick is the two-day train tour from Athens. On the first day, you depart from Athens at 0830 and arrive in Kalambaka at 1330; transfer to your hotel; and join the Sunset Tour in the evening. The second day commences with the four-hour Half-Day Morning Tour. The afternoon is free until you are driven to the train station for the return journey to Athens (Approximately 1722 – 2215). This tour is priced at Euro 155/person.

Part 6 – The Greek Islands

We remain concerned about experiencing a traditional Greek village. So we explored the notion of visiting a Greek Island. This post revealed five islands that we would consider visiting.

  1. Syros (Cyclades)
  2. Crete (Aegean)
  3. Sifnos (Cyclades)
  4. Hydra (Saronic)
  5. Corfu (Ionian)

Syros (Cyclades Group)

Our initial choice is Syros.

Syros is an island in the Cyclades group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. The capital of Syros and the administrative centre of the Cyclades group is Ermoupoli. It is a larger cosmopolitan town with over 21,000 residents. Key aspects include:

  1. Unique architecture (combination of Venetian and Cycladic)
  2. Good food
  3. More than a handful of villages to visit
  4. Plenty of beaches (Galissas, Megas Gialos, Kini & Poseidonia)
  5. To/From: Good ferry services with connections to other island groups. Times from Piraeus (Athens): 4 hours (normal); around 2.5 hours by high speed. Flights to Athens international airport (duration .5 hour).

This island meets our needs in terms of architecture, good food and villages.

A suggested plan

This suggested plan proposes a visit to Athens and Meteora, with an optional visit to the Greek island of Syros (it could be any island).

Athens

Our experience in visiting Barcelona, Istanbul, Bucharest, Budapest, and Prague confirms that we need about a week to fully explore a city. Such visits usually entail tours, follow-up visits to places identified on the tours, downtime, photography walks, attending a concert, and visiting markets etc.

Our Athens plan:

  • Day 1 – Arrival, transfer to accommodation, reconnaissance, and rest
  • Day 2 – A food tour to identify great places to eat.
  • Day 3 – Athens highlights tour
  • Day 4 – Free day (re-visit and markets etc)
  • Day 5 – Cooking lesson and Street Art/Photography tours
  • Day 6 – Acropolis Tour

Most itineraries to Athens schedule a visit to the Acropolis on the first or second day. We are inclined to schedule the food tour or Athens highlights tour early in the schedule. This will provide a good overview of the city and allow us to plan our remaining days. A visit to the Acropolis, although essential, will not provide this overview.

It is also important for us to identify good restaurants that understand, and provide for, the needs of coeliacs (i.e. gluten free food).

Meteora

My desire to see and photograph the unique geographical formations of this region is locked in! This visit will take a couple of days; however, we might extend it in lieu of the visit to Syros (to be determined).

  • Day 7 – Transit to Meteora; Sunset tour; overnight
  • Day 8 – Half-day morning tour to monasteries; Explore Kalambaka; overnight
  • Day 9 – Explore Kastraki/Trikala; Return to Athens; overnight
  • Day 10 – Depart for London

Syros Island (Optional)

Syros meets our needs in terms of architecture, good food and villages.

  • Day 10 – Athens to Syros; transfer to accommodation; reconnaissance; and rest
  • Day 11 – Explore Syros; overnight
  • Day 12 – Visit seaside village (e.g. Kini), overnight
  • Day 13 – Fly to Athens; Fly to London

Conclusion

We still need to decide if we’ll visit Syros. We’ll hold off on that decision for the moment. No doubt our overall budget and the associated costs for Athens, Meteora and Syros will help inform our decision.

Further research is required to determine if we’ll spend all our time in Kalambaka and Kastraki or visit Trikala. We’re looking for traditional Greek city villages and squares with local culture – not tourists! An extra day in Kalambaka can also be insurance against bad weather when we take the sunset tour. An additional opportunity would be really good.

This suggested plan, with its Syros option, provides the information to explore accommodation options and associated costs for the next post.

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