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Athens Travel Guide: Reviews, photos, & videos
For some, Athens is just a polluted, overcrowded city with a poor trash collection system—a necessary stop before heading out to the islands. For others, Athens is the polluted, overcrowded birthplace of western civilization—the place where Socrates discussed with Plato and great wonders were built to please the gods. Busy and dirty, Athens is a wonderful mix of old and new, glory and decay, class and kitsch. With the Parthenon topping the Acropolis like a sparkling white crown, and with archealogical digs still in process across town, history feels very close in this sprawling this city of three million people. Learn more about Greek history in the newly built museum on the Acropolis, through the enormous holdings of the National Archaeological Museum near Omonia, and the wonderful collections of ancient and modern art of the privately-owned Benaki Museum on Koumbari Street.
Check out the stadium built for the first Olympic Games in modern times, in 1896, and the structures built for the return of the games, in 2004. Go shopping in the upscale neighborhood of Kolonaki and find a tavern on a back street that serves homemade cheese, stifado (rabbit) stew, creamy taramasalata (fish roe puree), dolmades (stuffed wine leaves) and keftedes (meatballs). As the night falls, catch a live performance of rembetika music in the newly revitalized neighborhood of Psiri, have a drink or two at a waterfront club in Pireaus, and stay out all night until the sun comes up over Lycabettus Hill. If time allows, take a trip to Cape Sounion, some 40 miles southeast of the city, at the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula, to see the ruins of the temple of Poseidon.
