Spring has sprung, and it’s time to get outside and explore on the weekends! We love living in Atlanta because Georgia just has so much to offer! Head north, and you’ll reach the Blue Ridge Mountains. Head southeast, and you’ll hit beautiful beaches and barrier islands. There’s something for everyone! Here are a few of our favorite Georgia getaways along with our favorite places to stay and things to do.
We’re heading back to Greece on the blog today after a long break! Once we visited the beautiful Greek Isles of Santorini & Hydra, we returned to Athens ready to see some of the amazing Greece. Our first stop was the Acropolis, of course! It worked out well for us to go later in the day, and even though there were still plenty of fellow travelers around, it can get much worse since it’s the main site folks cruising try to hit on their day trip from the port. While we’re on practicalities, definitely wear good walking shoes with traction so you don’t slip on the stone paths in Athens. Also, be prepared to climb up to the Acropolis; it’s named “high city” for a reason!
I’d highly recommend either investing in a tour guide or downloading an audio tour (thanks, Rick Steves) ahead of time so you learn about the history of the birthplace of Western civilization. A few of my favorite stops in the Acropolis were the amphitheater, the Temple of Athena Nike, the Parthenon, the giant Greek flag at the overlook with great views of the city below, and the Erechteion. I am always in awe to be able to see places like the Parthenon in person and marvel at what a feat of engineering it is. I’m also amazed it’s survived until now since it “has been rocked by earthquakes, set on fire, shattered by exploding gunpowder, looted for its stunning sculptures, and defaced by misguided preservation efforts” (read more in this fascinating Smithsonian article). Because of pollution & the effects of acid rain today, the Parthenon is pretty much in a continuous state of restoration.
Perhaps because of all the scaffolding at the Parthenon, I really loved the Erechteion, especially the Porch of the Caryatids. The six majestic statues are replicas of the originals, five of which you can see at the stunning Acropolis Museum. The sixth one is in the British Museum in London since it was taken by the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Lord Elgin and is yet to returned. I loved that after visiting the Acropolis you can see it pretty much everywhere else in the city, high on the hill. If you’re out at night, it’s quite a stunner!
Your 12 euro Acropolis ticket also includes admission to the Ancient Agora, where you can see the market place and center of government where daily life was lived out in ancient Greece. There’s a lot to explore here including the rebuilt Stoa of Attalos which houses the Agora Museum, the lovely little Church of the Holy Apostles, many a ruin, and the well preserved Temple of Hephaistos. The temple was very impressive to me, especially the beautiful friezes depicting various scenes from Greek mythology.
On our final day in Greece, we enjoyed a leisurely morning in Athens before setting off for Delphi where pilgrims would travel to visit the oracle of Apollo. I’d researched various one day tours to take but in the end we decided to do it ourselves as a day trip. So we rented a little Fiat and drove the few hours to Delphi. The drive was gorgeous since it was spring, and yellow wildflowers were in bloom along the roadside! By the time we had a late lunch in the cute little town and got out to the site, we virtually had the place to ourselves, which I love!
A few highlights of the Delphi’s Sanctuary of Apollo were walking the Sacred Way, seeing the omphalos (navel) which ancients believed was the center of the world, the beautiful Treasury of the Athenians, the Temple of Apollo which would’ve housed the oracle, the theater, and the stadium where the Pythian Games were held. The view above the theater with Mt. Parnassos in the background was spectacular. We also stopped by the Sanctuary of Athena, whose circular tholos with three standing Doric columns was one of the famous Delphi photos I’d seen before visiting. Pilgrims who traveled to Delphi also worshiped Athena in addition to Apollo. I’d highly recommend finding time to visit Delphi if you can fit it into your Greek itinerary!
If you’ve been to Greece, do you have any to add to this list? Which one do you most want to visit?
Today’s post is by our good “friend afar,” Melissa! She’s my oldest sister and along with my niece met my husband and I in Greece in May. The flight to meet up with us in Athens didn’t quite go as planned so she shares her story of making the best of interrupted travel.
Ninety-nine percent of the time that I’ve traveled, travel plans work the way they are supposed to. That is saying a lot for two multi-week trips to Europe that both involved multiple flights and trains to connect between cities. However, eventually something is going to go awry the more you travel. You can either let it ruin your trip and be miserable or enjoy the experiences that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. We have talked about these experiences since our trip more than those that were planned.
To maximize our time in Greece, the well laid plan was to arrive in Athens in the morning, meet up with our travel companions, then take the ferry from Piraeus to Hydra to stay for a couple of nights before exploring Athens. The only direct connection to arrive in Athens in the morning is via JFK and when bad weather and a closed runway there caused our delay out of Atlanta, we missed our connection, and were switched to the flight through Frankfurt. Due to the delay we arrived in Germany when we were supposed to be arriving in Athens! Instead we had a four hour layover and then another four hour flight. Since we were only spending four days in Greece before continuing our travel to the UK we were both discouraged especially since our delayed arrival in Greece would be after the last island ferry and we would be staying the night in Athens rather than on the island.
After eating a good German breakfast and enjoying strong coffee and letting our travel companions know of our delay, my 20-year old daughter was ready get some sleep in the chair at the airport, which gave me time to use the airport’s wifi to rebook travel plans. I’m the travel planner in the family but my sister had researched and booked most of the Greece portion of this trip. I also have not traveled alone nor with just one of my children to unfamiliar places so I knew I needed to come through for us since the two of us would be spending the night alone. We wanted to stay near the port and take the first ferry the following day. I quickly began to wonder what travelers did about interrupted plans before the internet as I settled in to research some options! Not yet an avid user of Trip Advisor (I’m a top contributor now because it has been so helpful) I started by googling hotels near the Port of Piraeus and stumbled on a blog listing several. I didn’t want to spend much since I thought I would already be paying for a night on the Hydra I wouldn’t be using (they didn’t end up charging us) and having to rebuy ferry tickets (you are only able to cancel in person at the port before the scheduled departure…difficult when you are in another country). I found that Hotel Argo Anita got good reviews and was listed for a reasonable price. I ended up booking it through Booking.com which I also had not used before. This was great because I could book the room but it didn’t ask for a credit card so I could avoid another wasted night (just in case).
Once finally arriving in Greece….sitting alone at the baggage claim carousal…. and finally wandering to the lost baggage counter our adventure can finally begin….
We had already planned to take the bus to the port anyway and meet our party there so I was pretty set on that part. The guy who sat behind us on the bus happened to be the same one I had inquired with about how to purchase a bus ticket. I asked him how I would know where I should get off at the port and he said he wasn’t going that far but that we should move to the front and ask the bus driver to tell us where to get off when we got to Piraeus. I discovered this would be invaluable for the remainder of my trip because unlike the subway, there is no way to know where you are or where you should get off and everyone just seems to know.
I had written some vague directions I found on the hotel website about where they were located once we arrived at the port but thankfully Hotel Argo Anita wanted to be found as they had attached yellow and black printed signed with Hotel Argo Anita and an arrow to many of the local street signs. After twisting through several blocks that seemed a little deserted and seeing several stray cats picking through trash we found our much desired destination (a bed) and were relieved to find it more welcoming than the surrounding area.
Welcoming Lobby of the Hotel [Photo credit: Hotel Argo Anita]
Photo credit: Hotel Argo Anita
We were able to start the next morning with wonderful Greek yogurt, be transported to the ferry by a cute Grecian grandfatherly looking gentleman, and were finally on our way to our island destination, Hydra. What could have been a miserable experience and a wasted vacation day in one of the most beautiful places in the world turned out to be a memorable experience that neither of us will soon forget.best
Picture of Carey and Mel on the Ferry to Hydra!!
[This is not a sponsored post. I just wanted to share the places and websites that helped us out during our interrupted travel!]
I had an absolutely stunning stay in Greece! It’s such a beautiful place, and we had a fun time exploring a country that’s been on the top of my travel list for quite some time. I highly recommend a trip to see a couple of Greek Islands as well to explore the ancient sites of Athens and surrounding areas.
One of our favorite outings in Athens was a joint shopping and dining adventure. Before the trip, we’d read multiple places about visiting the Melissinos “The Poet Sandal-maker of Athens” shop for handmade, leather sandals. The store is located near Monastiraki, not that far from the Ancient Agora site we visited earlier in the day. The Poet’s grandfather opened the shop in the 1920s to make sandals for the working and upper class, including for theater productions, and later his son, the Poet’s father, sold them to tourists in the 1950s. The sandals became extremely popular when celebrities, including Sophia Loren, Jackie O., and John Lennon bought them. Even today celebrities still buy the sandals and signed photos of various ones are displayed in the stop!
It’s a unique experience visiting the shop and trying on sandals that are then fitted exactly to your foot. I also was commissioned by Meagan to bring her a pair back, and thankfully, she chose a lace-up sandal, the Sophia Loren, which was perfect since the laces can be used to fit them. I tried on several before I decided on the gladiator style Cleopatra for around $45. My sister and niece bought the John Lennon and Maria Callas (I just love the fun names!) sandals. Make sure you allow for plenty of time to try on and get the sandals fitted.
Special instructions that went along with the sandals included putting clear nail polish over the nail heads so that when you sweat it doesn’t bleed on you and using olive oil to turn the sandals are darker color. While at the shop for an hour, my husband enjoyed browsing on his phone and petting the dog in the shop. He did a little TripAdvisor research for lunch and found us an amazing deli (though not your typical American deli) for lunch, which ended up being one of our best meals of the trip. More on that dining outing another time! Are you drooling over our sandals yet?
