2025 Balkan Travels - Greece Part One

Travel Day:

The view from our Athens hotel.

It is a long flight from Omaha to Athens, Greece.  We arrived late morning and took a taxi to our hotel.  The hotel was a few blocks from the acropolis, a near ideal location.  It was located near the acropolis, the acropolis museum, and a shopping area.  We were too early to check in so we left our bags at the hotel and went walking around the area.  We avoided the acropolis and its Museum since we would be visiting them the next day.  We checked out a small Orthodox church, some souvenir shops, and we found a cafe where we ordered some gyros for lunch.

We returned to our hotel and we'd only killed an hour so we had some drinks at the bar and, literally, fell asleep on the lobby chairs waiting for our room to be ready.  We got in a couple hours earlier than expected and we finished our naps in our room.  We finished the day with bar food.  

The view from our hotel balcony, as you can see, was pretty magnificent.

Athens City Tour:

The next day we'd booked a half day tour of the acropolis and Athens.  We met our guide after breakfast and we went to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon.  Our guide was knowledgeable but had a bit of 'college student' feel to him.  He gave us a nice tour of the amphitheater, Parthenon, and other government and religious buildings built on the acropolis.  I have to say, while the Parthenon was impressive, it didn't quite meet my expectations, though I think it may have been the crane and scaffolding, part of a renovation, that knocked it down a notch in my book.

The Parthenon on top of the Acropolis.

We next got in a van and we had a driving tour of Athens passing important buildings and historical monuments.  The tour ended at a viewpoint of the city.  Athens is a nice enough city, but compared to a few others we have visited, it is kind of middle of the road.  I was expecting the city to have an older feel, like Rome, but it didn't.

The Caryatids, female sculpted pillars, are part of the Erechtheion temple.

Our guide dropped us not far from the Acropolis museum.  We ate lunch at the museum before walking through the exhibits.  I wish we'd had a guide besides the audio guide.  It was ok but we are not museum people and the audio guides were a bit too wordy for me.

Delphi Tour:

The second full day in Greece was a tour of the Delphi Oracle temple.  We had a new guide and she was awesome.  She was obviously a history nerd.  She knew her names, places, and dates backward and forward.  Her one quirk was her extremely dirty glasses ... I couldn't tell how she could see through the smudges.

A lion attacking a gladiator at the Delphi Museum.

The drive to Delphi is about two hours with a snack, drink, and toilet break. Our guide pointed out historical places along the way telling stories and mythology connected to each.  We arrived at Delphi and we started with the museum.  Despite the Wife and I not being museum people, we have found when you have a guide it makes all the difference.  This museum was small but very interesting with the help of our guide.

After the museum we did a walking tour up a path that took us through the structures where the female oracles, high/drunk on natural gases that seeped up from the ground would give cryptic predictions that were 'interpreted' by male priests.  The one thing this place needed is a coin operated Oracle that could spit out people's fortunes.  It would be a big money maker, for sure.  The walking tour ended at the highest point at the hippodrome.

The town of Arachova.

We tried to stop at Arachova, a bustling ski resort of a town, for lunch but it was packed.  One place we tried to get in had angus steaks from Omaha on the menu.  Here we were thousands of miles away in Greece and we had meat from home.  We chuckled about that.  We ended up eating in a nice place out of the town away from the crowds.  We both dozed a bit on the way back to our hotel.

Corinth Tour:

On our third day, our Delphi guide became our Corinth guide.  The weather, which had cooperated for the past few days, was a bit drizzly today, but it didn't slow us down at all.  The drive to Corinth is short, about an hour.  On the way, we visited the Corinth canal.  The canal was dug to bypass the 430 mile (700 km) trip around the peloponnesian peninsula.  The idea started in the seventh century BC but wasn't actually completed until 1893.  Before its completion, ships were often carried overland to shorten the journey.

The Corinth canal.  No boats were going through it when we visited it.

We next went to the ruins in Corinth.  Our guide expertly explained the history and the importance of Corinth in ancient history.  She walked us through the ruins and the museum, again giving expert explanations of all the structures and exhibits.

The Corinth ruins.

One thing that was funny was, both the Wife and I were wondering about 'rich Corinthian leather', a selling point for car interiors back in the '70s.  We were both afraid to ask our guide so I googled it.  Turns out 'rich Corinthian leather' was actually manufactured in New Jersey and was a creation of an ad agency.  We both got a laugh at that and were thankful that we didn't ask our guide.

We stopped at a local street food place on the way back to get a quick and portable lunch on the way back to Athens.  We enjoyed Souvlaki in a pita wrap.  Very yummy.

Back in Athens, we went walking around the pedestrian street near the acropolis and completed our souvenir shopping for Athens.

The first four days in and near Athens were pretty good.  I know some of this post seems to make it feel like I didn't like it, but everywhere you go there is always a mix of good and bad experiences and, in Athens' case, the good outweighed the bad.

The Next day we would be going to leave Greece and fly to our next destination, Tirana, Albania.

Pictures can be found in my 2025-10 Greece Google Photos album.

Weekly Ephemera #159

• We were going to have a visit of the Niece's family but sick kids changed those plans so, for Saturday I managed to get back to my routine.  I'm looking forward to the Niece's family to reschedule when everyone is feeling better.
• We've spent the week catching up with "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race"
• My blood pressure has been a little bit high since I got back from our travels so I decided to restart my walking.  I walked twice this week for a total of 13 miles (21 km).  The walks felt pretty good so I look forward to ramping up the distance again.
• The first of the travel posts should come out tomorrow or Tuesday.