We disembarked at the Port of Piraeus (outside of Athens) on my birthday. We bid farewell to my folks who were flying back to the States while D and I and my sister and her family were staying on for an additional few days to explore Athens. I never really had a big desire to visit Greece but felt this would be a nice opportunity to see one of the oldest named cities in the world and learn more about ancient civilizations. After getting off the boat, we queued up for the taxi line to bring us into Athens and to our hotel.

After about a 45 minute drive (due to some abnormal traffic – I guess we arrived the day after a big holiday) and almost to our hotel, we passed by the Arch of Hadrian and Syntagma Square, where the Old Royal Palace is. This is also where you can see the Presidential guard change every hour at the tomb of the unknown soldier (we weren’t around on a Sunday but I guess they have a bigger guard change then).

We got checked into our hotel (Elia Ermou Hotel), located in a bustling shopping area (Ermou Street) and then walked over to see the guard change (above).

My sister invited us over to check out their vacation rental (about a 5 minute walk from our hotel). They had a nice apartment with multiple bedrooms, living room, kitchen, laundry. We ended up hanging out there quite a few times and also were able to use the laundry. At the end of the cruise, I gave one of my carry on luggages to my folks and D and I both were going to finish our trip traveling minimally (with just a travel backpack each).

We had dinner reservations for later in the day and had some time to kill (again it was quite hot here as well so finding something indoors was a priority). We elected to walk over to the Acropolis museum, but first had lunch nearby.

The Acropolis museum is filled with archaeological artifacts from the surrounding area from Greek Bronze Age to Roman and Byzantine Athens. It sits over some Roman ruins as well – you can actually go underneath the museum to see some of these ruins. It was neat to see these artifacts up close. On the 3rd floor, you also had a nice view of the Acropolis with the museum’s floor to ceiling windows.

The address of our dinner spot was a little confusing as first it said it was only 1.5 miles from our hotel, but then I searched the address on the restaurant web site and it said it was over 6 miles away. I have never had either the Uber or lyft app before but realized that to get to the restaurant (especially given the heat), we would need to find transportation. I downloaded the Uber app and luckily it wasn’t too expensive. However there was still traffic going on so it was going to take almost an hour to get there (our return trip by contrast took like 20 minutes).