Ok, listen! I’m sorry to have kept you waiting but I hope you find these posts well worth the wait. I decided to split each location into separate posts for easier reading. You may not have time to read about Greece all at once so this may help with that and also when you need to refer back to a certain location. For those of you who have Greece on your bucket list or if you’re currently making plans, you are barking up the right tree! We initially decided on Greece as our destination for our 11th wedding anniversary trip because it was open for travel. I mean, we had always thought Greece was a possibility but we do a big anniversary trip yearly and we thought Greece may happen one of these years but it wasn’t high on the list, major oversight. Greece is DROP DEAD GORGEOUS and even better than the pictures could ever describe but I’m going to try and show you anyway.
Greece during Covid
Greece during the pandemic was much better than I expected. In order to travel there, they require a vaccine or a negative Covid test within 3 days of travel. For more information on this you can visit this website. Tj and I are both vaccinated so we had our vaccine cards ready and available for the travel agent at the airport. I will say that if you are concerned about Covid or nervous to be around people without masks, Greece is not for you at this moment. People traveling there are pretty lax about wearing masks. The restaurant attendants, taxi drivers and others working in Greece are great about wearing them but I think the travelers themselves are pretty over it, Tj and I included if I’m going to be honest. We really only wore our masks in places that required it, like the museums. We also felt more comfortable with them on in places like a bus full of people. There aren’t a lot of places that required we wear them for entry so we followed the rules where applicable. Overall we kept hearing how empty it felt compared to pre-Covid, which was music to our ears!
Travel
We are in Orlando and had to fly out of JFK to Athens. We planned this entire trip on our own with no outside help. Tj is the ultimate “I can’t get shafted” guy! Like he REFUSES to pay for something he can do himself with just a bit of research and time. Me on the other, convenience shopper all day, so if it was up to me I’d pay someone but we’ve been doing it this long I am use to all the time it takes to plan. This was probably one of the trips I was more involved in planning than usual. I just usually say yay or nay to the hotels and excursions that Tj finds. This year we were on a time crunch because after it was announced that Greece was opening, things started filling up quick. We made out like bandits on the flights because we booked them just days ahead of the official announcement of reopening, saving us about a thousand dollars. We booked hotels quickly but Tj probably changed his mind at least another 3 or 4 times before these plans were concrete. I’ll talk more about how we got from place to place when we get further into the trip. Our flight length from JFK to Athens was just about 8 hours, on the back it was 10! It’s amazing how much wind plays a part in your in flight travel time. The time difference was pretty drastic for us, 7 hours!!!! We slept most the flight because when we arrived in Athens it would be morning time and time to hit the ground running.
Where we stayed
Hotel Inn Athens is a really cute minimal hotel that was super reasonably priced and right in the center of everything with breakfast included. It is located near Syntagma Square which was a great city center with lots of restaurants. It was perfect because in Athens, you shouldn’t plan your hotel with the thought that you’ll spend much time there because there is so much to see. We spent the least amount of money on hotels in Athens because we knew we would splurge on the islands.
Getting around Athens
We taxied from the airport to our hotel which ran us about 35-40 euros. On day 1 because the hop on hop off bus is good for 24 hours, we used that as our transportation for the day. Day 2 was pretty much an entire day of walking, with a taxi to dinner.
Money! I almost forgot. We ended up exchanging our cash in Athens at a random exchange place where the rate was reasonable. You should do a little more research for this if you want to make sure you’re not getting knocked over the head. Going to from dollars to euros is already a punch to the gut.
Our itinerary started us in Athens. It made the most sense because we were flying into Athens that we would just start there. We planned for 2 days which ended up being perfect because by the end we both felt we had seen everything we wanted to see. The first day we just decided to do the hop on hop off bus. If you travel often, you know these types of buses are all over the world and the perfect way to see an overview of everything. But beware, there are 3 different companies and they are not built the same. We did the first one we saw and the bus was a hot mess. Old and raggedy, it didn’t give as much information about the monuments as we had been use to before and we watched in envy as the nicer buses passed us. If you’re going to do this, I would suggest the red buses, City Sightseeing Athens. You can get off and on as you please, seeing the things that interest you the most. They have buses running often so catching the next bus should be fairly easy and fast. We decided to stop at a museum which I wouldn’t recommend the one we did but I heard the Acropolis Museum is amazing!! I wanted to go so bad but Tj was museum’d out by the end of the first one.
Outfit Planning for Athens
Let me just touch on outfit planning real quick, because this was important to me, haha! So Athens was very much a walking city, siteseeing type of vibe. I would absolutely recommend good walking shoes whether you are a tennis shoe person or comfy sandal. There is a LOT of walking and uphill, down hill, rocks, the works. No need to be our here looking modelesque and breaking your ankle. Plan accordingly. It’s hot and this Greek sun will have you out here baked so cover your head your eyes and anything else you don’t want fried.
We got off at any place that looked exciting and where some action might be happening.
We found a restaurant that was pretty popular and had some good reviews so we stopped there for lunch.
Dinner night one was SO GOOD!!! We kind of just got lost in the sauce. Athens is full of the cutest restaurants on every corner and choosing one seemed impossible. We just wondered, looking at different menus and of course for me, I was drawn to the places with the dreamy décor.
Athens Day 2
We planned for a 4 hour Mythological Tour that we found on Viator. I wanted to know more about all the temples and monuments we’d be seeing and the tour guide was awesome. We knew little to no Greek myth so it was interesting to learn. Learning how old the ruins were was so eye opening. It really makes you realize how much of a baby our country is. To be seeing things built thousands of years BC was just insane.
Our stops included the Temple of Zeus, Acropolis, and several others but the coolest thing we did was outside of our tour. We went to Mars Hill (Areopagus) where Apostle Paul once preached about our Lord and Savior, mind BLOWN!!! As Christians, we were in complete Awe! We learned that our church years ago had a whole worship service up here which is the coolest thing ever!
Our lunch was not apart of the tour but we found a cool spot right next to the Parthenon with views of the Acropolis and I had my first real Greek salad, which is only veggies and feta cheese, no lettuce. I should also mention that due to Covid there was no seating inside of restaurants, only outside seats available.
Dinner was one to remember!!! We had seen the dinner in the sky attraction on Viator and then I saw it on RHOA and thought it would be worth the adventure. It was definitely pricey but it was absolutely worth it.
A lot of you asked me about the food. It was AMAZING and prepared in front of us by the chef while in the air! There were a total of 3 attendants in the air helping prepare and serve the food. There were 5 courses, each of them better than the next.
Next up Santorini…meet you there!
Leah!!!! The only thing better than following along with your trip was this recap! 😭🙌🏾 Everything is stunning and so perfectly laid out. Definitely worth the wait girl!
Thank you so so much Alise!!!