Are you starting your cruise or vacation in Athens and have one full day in Athens? Worried about how to get everything done in that short time? First off, you have to prioritize what you absolutely want to see and accept you can’t actually see it all. BUT….you can get a really good starter tour on Athens that may give you a flavor of the city and encourage you to come back for more time in this great city.
Honestly, I didn’t have much expectations about Athens. Some misnomers I had heard leading to my trip: “it’s just another big city with some old architecture.” or “Other than the Acropolis, there wasn’t much else to see”. If you plan your one day trip correctly then you can actually ignore those misnomers and have a wonderful day like our Party of 10 did earlier this summer.
If you truly only have one day in Athens (like 8-5), I highly recommend you spend it with a tour. We are a Party of 10 so we chose to select a private tour just for the 10 of us and it was the best decision. You can also join a semi-private or small group tour which would be my recommendation if you have a smaller group but don’t want to pay for a fully private tour. But if you can do a private tour, it’s far more customized to your specific needs.
I did a ton of research and spoke with several tour groups to find just the right one for our group. I always like to go with small businesses that specialize in that actual city. For Athens we chose P.G.T. Tour Group and worked directly with Nikos, the owner. How did I settle on PGT (Private Greece Tours)? Nikos guided me on selecting the right tour for our group and customized it based on where we wanted to go. Other tour groups were less willing to customize or suggested other places we weren’t as interested in going. It’s important to listen to your customer and Nikos certainly did just that. In addition, Nikos was also able to secure two other transfer assignments from us as well – picking our groups up at the airport as well as taking the group to our cruise terminal. So it was an easy choice to go with PGT because they could do it all for us.
Athens was the start of our vacation and our two families of five that make up the Party of 10 were meeting in Athens (not flying together). We wanted to make sure that we found a comfortable place to rest after our long journey, be centrally located and feel like we could “experience” Athens with ease. We chose to rent a VRBO home in Plaka (you can find the link here) for all 10 of us. The home was three floors, had four bedrooms (plus more in the basement that we didn’t use), mini-kitchens in most rooms and a dining area – all centrally located in Plaka, a mostly pedestrian neighborhood under the Acropolis. In fact, we could see the Acropolis from our rooftop patio which was a nice surprise when we arrived.
Our tour guide Olesya from PGT met us around the corner from our VRBO promptly at 8:00 am and escorted us to our waiting Mercedes Sprinter Van. We arrived quickly to the bottom of the Acropolis. We had pre-purchased our tickets so we didn’t have to wait in a long line but rather walked right in. Olesya is a seasoned tour guide and we stopped along the path to get different views of the city below as well as hear about the history of where we were. There were other groups as well being the beginning of the summer season, but going up it didn’t feel too busy since we had an early start. When we got to the top, it did begin to rain but this cooled it down a bit after the hike up to the top. Luckily the driver had packed umbrellas in anticipation so we were well prepared. We toured the area, taking pictures and learning more about the history and architecture of what once had been there. The views of Athens were spectacular.
The hike back down was far more crowded with loads of tourists now going up and it didn’t help that it was raining more heavily at this point. So we really had to take it carefully going down so as not slip. We joined back with our driver and toured the city stopping by the Prime Minister’s Residence, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Panathenaic where the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896.
From there we started our journey to Cape Sounio driving along a scenic coast road called Greek Riviera. We stopped about half way for a lovely lunch along the sea with a restaurant staff that completely looked after us and gave the kids extra dessert free of charge!
We arrived at Cape Sounion and walked up to the Poseidon Temple. The views of the Bay of Sounion were beautiful and gave us more perspective on historical life outside of Athens. I highly recommend adding this to your tour of Athens and seeing more of the countryside and seaside. Plus Cape Sounion was far less crowded and we could walk around it with ease. It also helped that it was no longer raining.
Many of our Party of 10, fell asleep on the trip back to Athens. The ride was comfortable and we were all still jet lagged so the nap was a nice respite from our travels. We arrived back at our starting point in Plaka and thanked our tour group for the wonderful day. We relaxed a bit before heading out for the night exploring just the right place to eat in Plaka.
Note: Wearing comfortable shoes can’t be recommended enough here because of the uneven roads or cobblestone streets. This is evidenced by one of our crew falling and injuring their elbow for the remainder of the trip. Didn’t stop us all from having a wonderful time but it could have been a lot worse.
So a lot can be seen in Athens in one day if you secure a tour. While Greece has so many wonderful islands and places to see, I do feel that we could again arrive in Athens and see some other areas we didn’t get to like the Acropolis Museum and the Temple of the Olympian Zeus and the Temple of Hephaistos. All in all, I highly recommend stopping in Athens and exploring the city even if you only have one day, although I recommend you do it as a part of a tour rather than just on your own.
