To start Day 3, we were supposed to do our Acropolis and Ancient Agora tour…but I got a message that the Agora would be closed for Sunday so I could either move it to a different day, do half of the tour…and cancel and refund. So, we moved it to Monday- but that meant that we would be doing the museum before the site and some smaller sites before the big ones…but we decided that was OK.

So, we had our hotel breakfast and headed out towards Lycabettus Hill in an Uber. Our Uber had to drop us off a half mile from the entrance due to a race we were crossing. Which meant I had to walk up hill AND pay for the Uber 🙂

Mount Lycabettus or Lycabettus Hill is a limestone hill that is 1000 ft above sea level and is the highest point in Athens. The name literally means “the hill walked by wolves” and the legend is that there were wolves who lived here.

There is a funicular railway that climbs the hill from the Kolonaki railway station at the base. We obviously paid to ride that up vs hiking the hill… but after learning it was 40 euro for 3 of us to ride it both ways, we thought about it lol Little pricey.

It wasnt a great weather day, a little rainy and a LOT windy… but just gotta get on with the tourist stuff when you can. ha You can literally see everything in Athens from this point. Up top there is a restaurant (which I learned later is apparently fine dining and very good- but it was like 10am…so no fine dining for us) and an old church..and an open air theater that a lot of big musicians have played at including Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath and others

The Acropolis in the distance on the rocky plateau.
The Panathenaic Stadium that we were headed to next from one view
We made our way back down the funicular (which only runs every 30 minutes) and headed to the Stadium – called the Kallimarmaro or “beautiful marble” in Greek – it is the only stadium in the world built entirely out of white marble.
The original site is from 330BC was used for the Panathenian Games, but then it was renovated in 140BC giving it its marble stands and horseshoe shape. After the fall of Rome- most of the marble was looted, but a wealthy entrepreneur funded it’s full restoration in 1890. This construction holds 50,000 people was the site of the first modern Olympic games in 1896. It is still the Olympic flame handover site for Athens and its the finish line of the Athens Marathon.
Next we walked through a bit of the National Gardens of Athens towards the Zappeion – a building that was built to house fencing in the first Olympics and the exhibition hall and now is a multi-use building. They were having some sort of kid event with salsa dancing and performers on stilts and music as we walked through.
Interesting banner for Popcorn in greek on the cart.
Back through the gardens we found more interesting spots.
We popped out of the gardens at the Hellenic Parliament at Syntagma Square’s Tomb of the Unknown Solider for the changing of the guard ceremony. Once weekly at 11am on Sundays there is a whole parade and music and a big show of it… but hourly there is a small ceremony. We arrived at 12pm. Missed it by an hour!
The Evzones soldiers in traditional uniform including fustanella (skirt/kilt) and tsarouhia (pompom shoes) performing precise, slow-motion movements to switch out the guarding of the tomb.
After the ceremony, we popped back into the gardens to walk the rest of the sites
Bronze statue of Alexander the Great as a teenager- that actually was just placed here in 2019.
We walked past Hadrian’s Arch or Hadrian’s Gate- which was the city gate between the ancient road and the sites of the Temple of Olympian Zeus. It was built by the citizens of Athens to honor the arrival of the Roman emperor Hadrian in 132AD. Hadrian was bestowed Athenian citizenship in 112AD during a visit, so the inscriptions on the arch welcome him as an Athenian, not as an emperor. He really loved Greece and Athens and favored them with gifts and money during his reign as emperor.
Since this was the state of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, we decided that paying to go in and walk around didn’t make much sense… so we just looked around the grounds through the fence. The name “Olympian Zeus” just means the god Zeus of Mount Olympus. Construction began in 700 BC but didnt complete until Hadrian’s time some 600 years later. At its height it included 104 colossal columns and was the largest temple in Greece. It only stood in its full glory for about a hundred years before it was pillaged during a Germanic invasion. Then after the fall of Rome, the stone was quarried from here for other projects, leaving only 16 of the pillars
Aristotle wrote about this site in his “Politics” that it was hubris to build on such a scale. saying that these sort of “great works” was just tyranny engaging the populace for great works of the state and left them no time, energy or means to rebel.

It was time for some lunch, so we walked into the Plaka neighborhood at the base of the acropolis hill.

Tried to see the inside of the church and walked into the middle of service… decided not to. ha

We ate at a restaurant called Lyra we found nearby and it was amazing.

I wanted a cappucino and a coke. Coke apparently comes with lemon here. ha
Kegan decided red wine was sounding best for him.
Sheep meatballs
Pita with a chunky salsa type dip
Crispy potatoes
Grilled octopus with a hummus spread
Grilled lamp chops, served with more potatoes. I’m pretty sure Kegan ate the equivalent of like 3 whole potatoes cleaning up the extras when Norah and I were done. ha

We had sufficiently wasted enough time to allow for our Acropolis Museum 3pm entrance, so we headed that way. It was just in time, too becuase it started raining on us right as we got to the museum.

Overall, the museum was a bit underwhelming. It is cool that they have taken the original statues and stone carvings and housed them inside for preservation and created replicas at the Acropolis outdoors… and I know these are like ANCIENT and massive and all of that… but like, everything is so worn down its hard to even see what they were, so its just like walking through floors of melted wax figures that I’m sure are important…and worth seeing.. but I don’t know… I didn’t get much out of it. Everyone says you can’t miss this museum…I say you can 🙂

After the Acropolis museum, we were 11k steps in for the day and it was time for our afternoon siesta in the hotel room where I take my two hour nap and Norah gets her screen time in. ha

We booked another escape room for the evening, this time a 2 hour one. (Turns out after talking with the guy, there are no 1 hour escape rooms left in Athens, all 2-4 hours) We booked Death in Space at Escapepolis.

They had a very friendly and attention-loving dog named Liza. She was a sweet old girl.
We escaped in a little of half the time…so an easy room. Cool space ship type controls and electronics and screens, no puzzle locks or anything… but the music was SO loud during the entire thing we were all drained when it was over. I told the guy it was too loud and he was like, why didn’t you say something?? and I was like I did, like 5 times! – turns out I don’t think our game master monitoring us spoke English well (understandable!) so he didn’t hear me and the main guy who worked the front checked the controls and a water bottle had fallen and knocked a dial for the sound over way higher than it should have been. So between screaming music, a big chunky arm strap computer on my arm and the heat of the room, we were an overstimulated mess after an hour. haha But, all good- a fun room and concept.

We grabbed a quick takeaway box from the grill at the hotel (much more managable portions this time) and called it a night.

Day 4 started with breakfast at the hotel again- I finally remembered to take a photo of the spread.

We had to get up earlier than we like to get across Athens to our meeting point for a 9am starting tour. We got our headsets and checked in and headed to the Acropolis site.

While waiting on some in the group to use the bathroom, a cat nearby decided to make friends with this guy and crawled right into his lap for a cuddle. This is definitely how you get a cat. ha
The Theatre of Dionysus on the south slope of the acropolis hill – the original theater, the oldest theater, where the works of Sophocles, Aristophanes and Euripides were all performed.
Me, looking up at how high we’re going to be climbing in the next 30 minutes lol It didn’t end up being bad at all. The climb up was broken up into sites along the way that made it feel really reasonable to walk through.
Philopappos Monument in the distance from the base of the Acropolis. It is a 2nd century Roman mausoleum for a roman senator.
The famous Temple of Athena- or Parthenon- up close. Built in Doric style of Pentelic marble with 8 columns on the short sides and 17 on the long sides. Built in the 400s BC to celebrate the Greek victory over the Persians in the Greco-Persian Wars.
The Erechteion – on the north side of the acropolis
The Porch of the Maidens with the Caryatid statues
View of the west end of the Parthenon. If you look at the top- you can see them placing one of the stones as part of restoration activities. Restoration activities seem to be taking much longer than the original construction, which took about 15 years total, including the decorating, sculptures, and finish work after the 9-10 years required to build the main structure.
An overlook from the Acropolis down over the Agora – with the temple of Hephaestus that we would visit next on the second part of our tour.
View down over the greek theatre that we passed on our way up.
On the way out, we thought the underside of the Temple of Nike was pretty cool- how the ceiling was coffered like you still see today in some homes.
The Temple of Hephaestus – the god of workers – was used throughout history and then later as a church from the 7th century through the 1800s- so it remains in really good shape comparatively.
Maybe the first public free water access point. Greece built an acqueduct from the mountains and made it free for the people.
The Stoa of Athens- originally from 150BC, rebuilt to house the Agora museum in the 1950s. Its what the temple construction would have looked like when it was new to the people of ancient Athens with its long covered portico.

It rained on us pretty significantly during our Agora tour…so we looked around the museum after and then waited out the rain for 15 minutes or so before heading out to find some lunch.

After planning to go to a Greek restaurant we skipped another night, we Ubered there only to find it was now an Indian restaurant. ha So we searched again and found a charcuterie restaurant in between us and the hotel so we trekked it a few blocks there.

The shop is called Miran and is a 3rd generation family meat market with a few tables in the back.
Their menu had about 3 items on it – the meat platter, the eggs and meat and the pizza bread and meat. ha We selected the platter and Norah wanted the bread boat with cheese and meat. The waiter said “no, you want the eggs and meat” and talked us into it lol
The complementary Halva at the end was great with cinnamon dusted over the outside.
They are known for this meat that was on the platter- no idea what it is called. But it was like a rare cured beef with some sort of Indian type spices. (Edit: Kegan here- I, unknown to Erin, did the research on this place while she was typing. They are famous for their pastourma, a rare beef coated with Turkish spices and seen on the poster above, and their soujouk, the ground salami-like meat. Both of the recipes and techniques for these meats were from the founder of the place- Miran Kourounlian. Website is mirandeli.com if you want to ogle their meat…)

We continued our walk back to the hotel through a more working class normal neighborhood

A little corner grocery with salted fish outside
A shop that sold only eggs. Just big pallets of eggs only. ha
We stopped in to this Loukomades bakery that has been serving traditional Loukomades since 1912. Literally- they have water…and Loukomades, which are crispy fried dough balls soaked in honey and topped with sesame and cinnamon. Norah learned about these in 4th grade from a VR game called Lost Recipes where you make the lost recipes from different ancient cultures, and has been wanting to try them ever since. She said the 5 year wait was worth it- they were heaven.

The rest of Day 4 was very boring- we got back to the hotel around 4pm and we all slept for 4.5 hours after all of that walking today! ha So, here I sit at midnight typing the blog up… packing up suitcases after showering (apparently you have to shower and wash your hair on Monday Feb 16th this year because washing your hair on Tues Feb 17th on Chinese Lunar New Year will wash all of your good fortune for 2026 away! be aware!) If you were born in 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, 2014 or 2026 – wear red this year to maximize YOUR year of the horse. 🙂

Tomorrow we check out of this hotel and have a full day tour outside of Athens to Ancient Corinth, a winery, Mycenae and other stops… see ya after!