How to Spend a Week in Athens, Greece

Last updated on 14 May 2025

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I spent a week in Athens, Greece

One of my very good friends from high school days (we’ve known each other since we were 13) came over to England for a few months, and we seized the opportunity to make one of our high school dreams come true. We took Classics class together back when we were 16 and absolutely loved it. We knew that this was likely one of our few chances ever to head over to Athens and discover all the places we’d only read about in textbooks. So we spent a week in Athens, Greece, and loved it.

Thursday

We took the coach to London, Gatwick airport, where we got a flight straight to Athens. A shuttle driver met us off the plane and drove us to our hotel. Our hotel was very central, just a kilometre from the centre of the city.

Friday

Seeing as Friday was our first day in the country, we decided to go to a museum. We went to the Archaeological Museum, a short walk from our hotel. It was really amazing to see so many of the things that I had studied at Uni in my classics papers. A little be surreal but in an awesome way.

After having lunch in a cafe/restaurant outside the museum, we took a walk in a park nearby…which turned out to be a creepy idea. We saw that it was there on our map, and thought ‘hey, a park would be a nice way to spend this hot afternoon’, so off we went. Bad idea. It wasn’t really a park. It was a series of paths through dirt and dying trees, scattered with wild, unkempt undergrowth and creepy men wandering around the place. I kid you not. We left quickly…

After cooling off a bit under our air conditioning unit in our room (hallelujah), we walked down to the centre of town in the somewhat cool evening air and had a little wander. The main shopping area is called the Plaka, and it was full of little streets winding in and out of a centre square, with every shop you can imagine. From the big shops like H&M and Nike to little touristy shops that sold souvenirs and Athens mugs, to music shops and jewellery stores, and a few streets that held the Sunday morning flea market.

It was really nice to wander in the evening because it was cooler and there weren’t many people. We went into a few shops and bought a few things, and one guy in an olive-themed shop got excited when we told him we were from New Zealand. He said two things he knew about NZ: ‘Hobbits’ and ‘Haka’. That’s right, Mr Greek Man. That’s all we have in NZ. Hobbits doing the Haka. He also told me that I look Greek…

Saturday

Saturday was Acropolis day. We had read and re-read our guide books (mostly for fun and to look at the pictures, to be honest…), and they said that we should go up to the Acropolis in the early morning. So we got up early and made our way to the bottom of the hill. It was a slight mission trying to find our way up there, and we probably wouldn’t have found our way if it weren’t for a pair of Dutch girls we met on the way up, who were also trying to find it. We put our heads and maps together and managed to find our way. The first wee bit was a bit of an extreme climb, but it didn’t last long, and it turned out to be the hardest part of the entire day.

We made our way up the path, which wasn’t as steep, nor as big as we thought, and stopped every so often and took a picture (or 10). On the Acropolis itself, it was actually really cool, temperature-wise, because although it was blazing sun and about 33 degrees, there was a great breeze up there and it was actually rather pleasant. Roz and I walked around and took pictures and took some pictures for other people in front of the Parthenon, and eventually made our way down the other side to where the Theatre of Dionysus was.

We are both big theatre fans; I had worked in a theatre in New Zealand and Roz has just finished her Theatre Stage Management degree. When we were in school, we studied Frogs and Wasps by Aristophanes, the Greek playwright, and loved those. The Theatre of Dionysus was an awesome thing to see, as well as another theatre on the way there (top left photo, below).

From there, we looked inside the Acropolis museum, where it was very confusing as to whether or not we were allowed to take pictures…so I didn’t, just in case I got kicked out or something. The museum is really cool actually. It’s very modern, but on the inside, they have all the things that they saved from up on the Acropolis. On one level they have set it out in a way that is a mirror image of the Parthenon, and all the friezes are all displayed as they would have been on the actual building.

After a short stint there, we walked to the National Gardens, via Hadrian’s Arch and the Temple of Zeus, which is the largest temple in Greece. Of course, it’s all falling down, but it was still very impressive. The size of the thing is incredible, so I can imagine it would have look amazing when it was fully intact and in use, back in the day.

The National Gardens were super pretty, unlike the ‘park’ we went to on Friday. It was full of tall trees and even had grass (something we noticed that Athens didn’t have much of). Every so often there was a sprinkler, watering the undergrowth, which was refreshing when we ‘accidentally’ walked through one.

We made our way back to the hotel and another great meal. When we made our booking, we made it for breakfast and dinner. We thought it was best to have at least two meals sorted for us, as we didn’t really know what it was going to be like. It turned out to be the best idea ever. Breakfast was a buffet breakfast, we found places in town for lunch each day (from traditional Greek food to homemade pizza), and never had to worry about what we were going to eat at night. Perfect.

So that’s it for now! I know that that was only really two days, but on Sunday we didn’t really do much. It was our ‘break’ day, where we wandered a bit in town, but essentially had a relaxing day to regain the energy that we lost the previous day.

Read part two here!