Athens

So Athens. We finally went in October 2022, after about a decade of Janine saying "we'll do it next year". The Acropolis is the bit you're going for, obviously, but here's the thing nobody told us beforehand: Athens itself is a much better city than its reputation. It's scrappy, loud, full of stray cats, half-finished buildings everywhere — and somehow still one of the most enjoyable European capitals I've ever spent a week in. Reckon we'd go back.

[IMAGE: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1555993539-1732b0258235?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop | The Parthenon on the Acropolis at golden hour, with the city of Athens spread out below toward the sea]

The shape of the city

Athens sits in a bowl ringed by hills. The Acropolis is the famous lump in the middle. The Plaka and Monastiraki neighbourhoods curl around its northern foot. The harbour at Piraeus is a 10km train ride south. The whole city of about 3.5 million is sprawled out from there, rough and ready, much of it built fast in the 1960s and 70s with concrete that hasn't aged well.

The bit you'll spend your time in is small. Acropolis hill, the four neighbourhoods around it (Plaka, Monastiraki, Psiri, and Thiseio), and a couple of the museums. You can walk between all of them in 15 minutes each. We stayed at a small hotel in Plaka — the Adonis on Voulis Street — for about 110 euros a night with a rooftop view of the Acropolis. Hard to beat.

The Acropolis itself

Right, the headline. Pay 30 euros for the combined pass that gets you into the Acropolis plus six other archaeological sites (Ancient Agora, Roman Forum, Hadrian's Library, Olympieion, Aristotle's Lyceum, Kerameikos). The combined ticket is valid for five days — way better value than the single-site tickets at 20 euros each.

Get there at 8am when the gates open. Seriously. The official summer-season opening is 8am to 8pm, winter 8am to 5pm. Between 10am and 2pm in tourist season the place is basically a queue from the bottom of the slope all the way to the Parthenon, with cruise-ship groups in matching baseball caps stacked four-deep. At 8am it's almost empty. Janine and I had the Erechtheion to ourselves for about 15 minutes.

Wear proper shoes. The marble paths are polished smooth by a couple of millennia of feet and become genuinely slippery, especially after rain. We saw a woman go arse-over-tit on a wet morning at the Propylaea — fortunately no harm done but it was a near thing.

The Parthenon itself is half-scaffolded as you'll have seen — the restoration project has been running since the 1970s and isn't going to finish in our lifetimes — but you can still walk all the way around it and the scale is what you came for. The temple is huge. The columns are eight metres tall and lean inward by a few centimetres so they look straight to the eye, which is the kind of engineering trick that gets me going.

The Erechtheion (the smaller temple to the north of the Parthenon) is in some ways more interesting because it's intact-ish and has the Caryatids — the six female-figure columns. They're replicas now; the originals are in the Acropolis Museum at the bottom of the hill. Worth doing both in the same visit so you can compare.

The Acropolis Museum (do this immediately after)

Walk down from the south side of the Acropolis to the Acropolis Museum — about 5 minutes. 15 euros entry, opens 9am. This is the museum that was built in 2009 specifically to house everything they've taken off the hill for safekeeping. The top floor is the Parthenon Gallery — a glass-walled room laid out at the exact dimensions and orientation of the Parthenon itself, with the surviving frieze fragments mounted in their original positions. The bits the British Museum still has (the so-called Elgin Marbles) are represented by white plaster casts so you can see the whole sculptural programme, with the originals starkly missing.

It's a politically pointed museum and unapologetic about it. I think Greece will get the Marbles back eventually but it might take another generation. Either way, the Parthenon Gallery is the best museum hour I've spent in Europe.

Beyond the Acropolis

Athens has a lot more than the Acropolis but you have to look for it. Things we did and would recommend:

• Ancient Agora. Down the hill from the Acropolis. The actual marketplace where Socrates pestered people for a living. Includes the Stoa of Attalos, a fully reconstructed Hellenistic colonnade housing a small museum. Quiet, shady, and most tourists skip it. Free with the combined pass.
• Anafiotika. A tiny pocket of whitewashed Cycladic houses tucked into the northern slope of the Acropolis hill, built by stonemasons from the island of Anafi who came to Athens in the 1840s to build the king's palace. Feels like a Greek-island village glitched into the middle of a city. Walk it at sunset.
• National Archaeological Museum. A 20-minute walk north, about 12 euros. Probably the best collection of Greek antiquities anywhere in the world. The Bronze Age Mycenaean gold death masks alone are worth the trip. Janine found the Cycladic figurines section more moving than the Acropolis.
• Lycabettus Hill. Highest point in central Athens, with a small white church on top. Take the funicular up (about 10 euros return) at sunset and you get the city, the Acropolis, the sea, and the islands stretching out to the horizon. Best view in the city for the price of a coffee.

Eating in Athens

Right, the food. Three things you have to try:

Souvlaki. The proper version — pork or chicken on a skewer, taken off the skewer and wrapped in pita with tzatziki, tomato, onion, chips inside the wrap (yes, chips inside, this is correct), about 4 euros. Kostas in Plaka is a small hole-in-the-wall that's been there since 1950 and the queue tells you everything.

A proper sit-down Greek meal. Find a tavern that locals are going to. Klimataria in Plaka has been there since 1927 and does a proper octopus-and-ouzo set up. About 35 euros a head with wine. Go at 9pm — the locals don't eat dinner before 8.

Loukoumades. Small honey-syruped doughnuts. Lukumades on Aiolou Street has been making them since 1912. Order a plate of the classic and a Greek coffee. About 6 euros for the lot.

Don't bother with the touristy spots in the immediate Acropolis vicinity — they exist solely to feed cruise-ship walk-ups and the food is mediocre at twice the price.

When to visit

October was perfect for us — about 22 degrees, dry, low crowds. Avoid July-August at all costs; Athens can hit 40 degrees and the Acropolis hill in that heat is genuinely dangerous. Spring (April-May) is also lovely. Winter (December-February) is mild — about 12 degrees, you might get rain — and the museum-and-tavern version of the city works fine in cool weather.

Combining Athens with the rest of Greece

You'd be daft to fly to Athens and not put a few days on the islands at one end or the other. The Cycladic ferry hub at Piraeus runs ferries to Santorini, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros, Milos all day in summer. The ferry to Hydra (about 90 minutes) is a great car-free island day trip if you don't have the time for a proper island week. The Greece country guide covers the wider routes month by month, and the Athens category page collects the trip reports our community has filed from the city.

If you'd rather have someone else handle the logistics, tours in Greece has a range of Athens-anchored multi-day options that include the Acropolis with a proper guide — worth it for the historical context, even if you've read the books.

Practical info from official sources

The Greek Ministry of Culture's Acropolis page has the current opening hours, ticket prices, and any temporary closures (the restoration work shifts around). The Greek National Tourism Organisation site covers ferry schedules, weather, and seasonal festivals.

Bits worth knowing

The metro in Athens is excellent and cheap (1.20 euros a ride, three lines, all the major sites are on it). Taxis are plentiful and reasonable; use the Beat app rather than flagging from the street. ATM withdrawals — bank ATMs only, never the standalone Euronet ones in the tourist areas which charge punishing fees. English is widely spoken in the centre but learning a few Greek pleasantries (kalimera = good morning, efharisto = thank you) goes a long way and locals appreciate the effort.

Janine has a small thing for stray cats and Athens delivered. There must be 10,000 of the things in the city, all of them well-fed by the locals and weirdly friendly. There's a particular ginger one that lives at the Erechtheion which you'll probably meet.

Final word

Athens isn't a polished city. It's not Paris. The footpaths are uneven, the graffiti is everywhere, the bus drivers swear at you, and half the buildings could use a coat of paint. But its got a kind of warmth — Greeks are genuinely hospitable, the food is honest, the history is jaw-dropping when you stop to think about it — that makes it stick in the memory. Janine and I have been talking about going back ever since.

Five days minimum. Stay in Plaka. Get to the Acropolis at 8am. Don't eat dinner before 9pm. Take the funicular up Lycabettus at sunset on the last evening. That's the trip.