Athens, a city break with kids

Athens is probably not a city break on everyone’s list, and you may ask why we started our current travels with a 4 day stop over there? In short, it saved us about £2000 as a family on the price of flights to Asia from the UK, and when the objective is to get to Asia for as cheap as possible, then that’s a saving that can’t be overlooked if you have the time for such a stopover. So we embraced a city break and somewhere new and were quite looking forwards to seeing the city – especially after Alicia has recently studied Greek Mythology at school and seemed to really enjoy it.

Now, I’m very keen to not be a picture perfect blogger, and ensure our reviews are honest and warts and all, and Athens is very much a tale of 2 halves. Let’s start with all the good bits first (just to ensure you read to the end to get to the grunge bit).

Our flight into Athens was delayed, so we did have to take a 40 minute (and 40 euros) taxi from the airport and got to our apartment just before midnight (after midnight it would have increased to 55 euros). The train is around 45 minutes and 9 euros, and the bus is an hour and less than 5 euros. So the first morning was a lazy chilled one, making ourselves at home and figuring out our plan for the day. We opted for an easy day, first with a visit to the (original) Olympic Stadium, all built out of marble over 2500 years ago. The Panathenaic Stadium is quite the sight. The track has been refurbished over time and so Nyle thoroughly enjoyed running around it even in the intense midday heat. You can walk right up to the top seats and look down and over Athens including getting our first view of the Acropolis. There is a museum with the various Olympic torches and history hidden at the end of the tunnel that I imagine competitors would have entered the arena from, and of course a podium for a photo! Entrance is 10 euros for adults, 5 euros for students and children, and free for under 6 years and you got a free audio guide included. The kids really enjoyed this place, and had it not been a lot hotter than we expected I think we would have spent a bit longer there.

After the stadium we wandered through the National Gardens for 15 minutes and arrived in Plaka, which is described as the cool and hip part of town. This is a heavily pedestrianised area with cobbled streets and filled with restaurants but also lots of tourist-tat shops and some of the small streets did get very busy. By this time we were all hungry so had a very late lunch at an amazing Greek restaurant called Old Ithaki. Halloumi, houmous and bread, tzatziki, Greek salad, courgette fritters were all washed down with a day-1 beer and the kids enjoyed snacking on ours and sharing a spaghetti! We then wondered around Plaka a bit more with its cute squares, various churches in different sizes and eras, had an ice cream and then got the metro home around 7pm.

Day 2 was another lazy morning as Kris was working, then we headed to the National Archaeological Museum around a 5 minute walk from our apartment where there was a café and good wifi for working, and Stef and the kids enjoyed the museum. Entry to the café is free, and then for the museum adults are 12 euros, children 6 euros, and 5 years and under are free. It was a huge (and impressive) building and the kids enjoyed looking at the paintings, finding their doppelgangers in Greek god form, and exploring the rooms.

After a couple of hours here (which could have been longer) we all decided to jump on the Hop On Hop Off bus and use that form of transport around the city rather than busy public transport. There are 3 lines, the city, the port and the beach riviera – given we only had time for a 48 hour ticket, we opted to just stay in the city, but the Riviera in particular looked beautiful if you were here longer and wanted to escape the city. The city line went to all the main sites and probably took an hour for its loop of 15 stops costing 20 euros per adult and 10 for Alicia (Nyle was free again).

We headed straight to the north end of the National Gardens where we had spied a small zoo, tortoises in a lake and a playground from our research. The gardens themselves are beautiful and within minutes you lose the noise of the traffic as you meander through the trees, plants and pathways, but we found no tortoises and the farm was a few geese, some huge-horned goats and some odd-looking ducks! However, all was not lost as the kids play area was a huge hit. It was refurbished in 2023 and would go down as one of the best parks we have experienced, especially for our aged kids with slides, climbing frames, and swings for various ages and then a sand and water play section which was a big hit with Nyle – and with 50% shade coverage we were all pretty happy there. They did miss a trick by not having a café or refreshment kiosk right next to it!

Following a good play we hit the jackpot on the food front again with a visit to a veggie restaurant, Avocado. The Avocado burger was incredible and options for the kids included pizza, pasta and sweet potato. This is a very family friendly restaurant on the edge of Plaka so very easy to get to.

After Avocado we decided to rest our legs and just sit on the Hop On Hop Off bus for ¾ of the route whilst the kids had an ice cream and we enjoyed the sites – and peace! We saw Hadrian’s Gate, Zeus’ temple from the bus, neither of which I felt compelled to go and visit up close, and the same for the parliament building (including the end of the changing of the guard which takes place hourly).

Day 3 we had the Acropolis on our radar – you can’t go to Athens and not visit the main landmark. Unfortunately, we had been packing up our lives in the UK which was pretty stressful and to the wire, so we hadn’t really done the usual research we do before a break. This meant that we hadn’t pre-booked tickets, and the early slots had gone by the time we tried, so we tried to get there early (which ended up being 9.30am) and risked our luck. We had read about long queues and needing to skip the line, but we headed to the entrance by the museum rather than the main entrance, and got tickets within about 3 minutes, for a time slot about an hour later – so we bought them and mooched back to McDonalds down the road, took the chance to write some postcards (conveniently the post office is here too) and enjoyed a cheap coffee (rather than 8 euros a cup in the cafes outside the entrance!).

As we returned to go in, the ticket line was 4 times the length and there was a queue to get in, but that only took 5 minutes and so before 11am we were through the gates and wondering up towards the top of the hill with all the school groups and guided tours. We didn’t stop to read anything of where we were, but just powered on up to the top which took around 15 minutes, with conversations with the kids centred on the mechanics of building all this without machines 3800 years ago!!

It was busy, but could have been worse, and it definitely didn’t spoil our time looking around the Acropolis and Pantheon – Nyle enjoyed scrambling on the rocks and marble, Lissie enjoyed posing for photos. It was a good hour spent at the top and was a lot bigger than I imagined and very pleased we went, even though it cost 50 euros – Nyle was free again, and it was 10 euros for Alicia and 20 each for us. This is not stroller friendly so you will need a carrier if going up with small children who cant manage the climb. There is a stroller park at the entrance but then you would of course need to enter and exit at the same point.

We exited via the main entrance which was absolutely heaving by this point and was obviously the time and entrance to avoid. A 10-minute walk down took us to the bus stops for our HO-HO bus to take us back into the main area of the city. The rest of the day was very much a mooching one – we explored the underground at Syntagma, the square at Monastiraki, the streets around Psyrri, before heading for a sugar refuel at a very kid friendly café called Little Kook. This was the strangest place I think I have ever seen – it is completely encased in Snow White memorabilia, with Snow White and Princes’ serving you coffees, crepes and pancakes. The photos say it all I think – not cheap as you can probably imagine, but they needed feeding and it was something very different. And much more pleasant than the Central Market where we headed next. I expected something like the Barcelona market full of fruit, delis, cafes, meats etc. but instead we have turned Alicia vegetarian by walking past hanging carcasses of sheep, skulls of goats and the odd entire chicken hanging from their feet – we exited very swiftly and skipped the fish aisle and went for another refill at a lovely café on the corner of the square where we snacked on tzatziki and feta dips with more amazing traditional bread.

There were two places we intended to go but decided we were walked out and sometimes it’s better not to try and do too much with the kids for fear of complete breakdown so we ended our day on a high there. Our researched showed that the Acropolis Museum and going on the funicular up Lycabettes hill would have both been very family friendly, but each would also have set us back another 30-40 euros – but if you have the time, I imagine both would have been worth it.

If we came again we would have tried to stay more in the Plaka / Psyrri areas (but we would have paid double the £160 we paid for our apartment) so this is maybe something to keep in mind. Psyrri in particular was lovely full of antique shops, trendy independent clothing stores, hip cafes and bars and the streets adorned with ‘cool stuff’ – rather than flags or bunting they had used clothes which was very effective!

So here’s the negatives of Athens that probably really tarnished our experience and all the good bits.

• The immigration queue on arrival was around 45 minutes long – with tired kids this wasn’t great, and no family line ☹ Then there was a mammoth walk from one airport building where we landed to the main building where the baggage carousels and exits were – 20 minutes minimum. I am blaming the joys of Brexit for this wait and different arrival building.

• That taxi driver who brought us to our apartment at midnight tried ripping us off, despite all the flat-fare signs everywhere in the airport taxi rank! We stood firm, we won, but not appropriate with the kids in tow!

• ·Day 1 was tainted. The bus we got on to go to the stadium was busy and Kris was victim of a pickpocket who swiped her phone out the case (which was also attached around her neck) as she was holding on to the kids in the crush. In all the travelling we’ve all done, and all the countries we have been to, this has never happened to either of us and after the initial panic and cancelling the cards linked to googlepay and thinking of everything that was on there, it’s now just an inconvenience – biometric logins have made it too easy to not worry about your actual log in details!! Lesson learned – avoid busy buses and hold your phone over the kids!

• Athens has amazing old ruins and sites, but we found it disappointingly dirty, rough and needing a good old wash. There is a lot of poverty and unfortunately also a lot of homelessness. It’s also quite easy to spot the unsavoury characters to avoid and there is a constant sound of sirens around the city. We did some reading around this and the country has definitely suffered during the financial crash and the various immigration crisis’ from the last 20 years.

• Blanket statement, as there were exceptions, but we didn’t find it a very friendly place – in the Archaeological Museum the kids got told off twice within the hour for nothing – and not even by museum staff, just locals – for nothing (they were actually on impeccable behaviour this day!). I wouldn’t rank it up there as a family friendly city – there is stuff to do and see with the kids, but having been spoilt in Denmark, it isn’t really suited for them. Most restaurants we went to didn’t have kids menus and when we asked if we could have a smaller portion of (plain) pasta they were not prepared to reduce the price from the 15 euros on the menu!

• There is graffiti everywhere – and 95% of it is not good graffiti!!

• We know Athens is a capital city but it was a lot more expensive than we imagine. Main courses at a restaurant were around 15-20 euros, a pint of local lager was 6-8 euros, coffees 4-6 euros, and all the tourist attractions were generally 30-50 euros for us as a family of 4, and that was with Nyle being free (aged 6 seemed to be the cut off).

So a tale of two halves – some brilliance, a 7/10 kind of city, but tainted by the robbing and general dirtiness and appearance of the place. If you can find cheap flights and are prepared then you’d have a good time (it was 27 degrees in April too). We are glad we saw it, even with the insurance claim for a new phone it saved us just under £2000 in getting to Asia, but 3 days is enough and we can’t wait to head on to Asia for the foreseeable future.