Greece: Delphi, Meteora & Athens
We spent an incredible 4 day weekend in Greece to celebrate our 6 year wedding anniversary and as our “Labor Day” weekend trip. The way things work for my partner’s command, he has a four day weekend for almost every US federal holiday. We are able to travel within Europe without taking leave, or PTO, over those weekends. We try to travel mostly on those so make the most of his “free” time off. This year, he was on duty over Labor Day so had some comp days he was able to use later in the month, which ended up being perfectly timed with our anniversary. It was definitely a jam packed weekend but we loved it.
DELPHI
We flew straight into Athens and picked up our rental car. The highways and roads headed north are really easy but we were a little surprised by how many tolls there were (easy to pay with a credit card at the booth) - they definitely added up over the course of the weekend
We headed straight to Delphi (about a 2.5 hour drive) and stopped there to walk around the ruins and have lunch. It was easy to just buy tickets at the gate. It is absolutely worth a stop. Parking was easy just along the road at the base of the ruins. My favorite of the ruins was actually free and not behind the gate where you buy tickets - the Sanctuary of Athena is below the main road instead of above it!
METEORA
From Delphi we drove another 2.5 hours up to Kalampaka to see the monasteries of Meteora. We stayed in this Airbnb (https://www.airbnb.com/slink/FsxL7sKv). We didn’t make it to the town early enough to see any of the monasteries before they closed but we drove up to this viewpoint for sunset (https://maps.app.goo.gl/3vv1MY5pRAVCJtmVA...) and then walked around town to shop and have dinner. Taverna To Paramithi (https://maps.app.goo.gl/kcgfgMs23rztR4xTA...) had great food and live music. The other town people stay in is Kastraki - it is smaller and a bit more quaint looking than Kalampaka but it seems like you couldn’t really go wrong with either.
For the monasteries - there are 6 in total. Almost all of them require pretty steep walks up since they are, quite literally, built on cliffs. I recommend getting there as early as possible to try and beat the tour busses. We heard one tour guide saying that 15 busses showed up at one of the monasteries right at 9am when it opened - yikes. We were in line at 8:45am for the Holy Monastery of the Great Meteoron (opened at 9:30) and there was already a tour bus full of people ahead of us. This is the largest monastery. From here, we visited the Monastery of St. Rousanou. This one was much much smaller but said to be the most beautiful. It is one of the least visited. It, along with St. Stephens are supposedly the most visited by the locals versus tours.
ATHENS
We stayed in a neighborhood called Pangrati, which was a 30 minute walk from the Acropolis. We absolutely loved the Booking.com apartment. It was a great price and had incredibly sunset views of the Acropolis (see our anniversary photo at the top of this post!), Philopappos Hill, and Lycabettus Hill (there is a cable car up to this hill!), 5 minute walk to the Panathenaic Stadium, amazing restaurants, bars, and parks (https://www.booking.com/Share-hJUKvaK). We did find most of Athens to not be super stroller friendly because of stairs, cobble stones, crowds, etc so we either used our carrier (really pushing its weight limit with my 45 lbs 3 year old ) or had our son walk.
For the Acropolis, we did not book tickets ahead of time because we wanted to try to get the discounted tickets for kids under 5. We got up and got in line at the South Slope entrance at 7:45am (opening is 8am). The line was not horrible at all. We were able to get a completely free ticket for our 3 year old without having to show his passport, even though they did ask if we had proof of his age with us. We also saw people who had pre-purchased their adult tickets get turned away and send to wait in the ticket booth line to “purchase” the free kids ticket. Basically, everyone HAS to have a ticket scanned to get in, so you can’t just buy the adult tickets online and then get your kid in for free without waiting to get the free ticket (at least from what we experienced). This seemed to be the case for all of the ruins/archaeological sites in Athens as well as the Acropolis Museum.
The Acropolis Museum was also absolutely worth it and had great activities for kids. Overall, we found Greece to be so warm and welcoming for kids. One thing we did note, however, both on the Acropolis and at the ruins in Delphi, is that they have guards watching to make sure no one is doing anything they shouldn’t be on the ruins or picking up rocks they shouldn’t be. The guards will not hesitate to blow their whistles or yell at you - funny enough we saw adults get in trouble more than kids.
Walking from the Acropolis Museum to the Ancient Agora to the Panathenaic Stadium was a great path because it took us through flea markets, near most of the ruins, through the Plaka neighborhood and Plaka Market, right through Monastiraki Square, and we had constant great views of the Acropolis. Especially on a Sunday, it was perfect just for people watching and shopping.
The Panathaenic Stadium (original stadium from the Olympics that was then restored and used for the first modern Olympics in 1896) is also absolutely worth a visit. You can even go on the track and race your kiddo. The view of the Acropolis from the top row is incredible. Kid tickets were also free here.
