Ten Best Museums in Athens
And Other Reasons to Visit
In our last newsletter I was singing the praises of Thessaloniki (if you missed it you can read it here). So I thought it only fair to remind people that Athens still has a lot to offer. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve visited Athens, but I never tire of it. It’s busy and noisy, yes, but it oozes character and history.
I spent today writing a new Athens page for our website: The Ten Best Museums in Athens. I could easily have made it the twelve best, but I knew if I did that I’d then want to make it the fifteen best museums in Athens, and so on.
It was a pretty easy piece to write, once I’d chosen my own personal favourites, as we’ve already done full pages about many of the museums on my list. Eventually we’ll publish full pages on all the museums. And yes, we have visited them all, some of them several times. We go back to them not necessarily to write about them, but because we love them!
A visit to Athens wouldn’t be complete without a visit to one or two of our favourites, like the Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art or the wonderful Museum of Greek Folk Musical Instruments. Well, we both play music so we’re biased.
Visiting Athens
If you’ve never been to Athens then please try to get there. You can combine it with a visit to the islands, as with many of the islands you have to change planes in Athens anyway. Our advice is to add on a few days in Athens at the end of your trip, rather than the start. That way you don’t risk missing your flight home because of a cancelled internal flight. If you’re already in Athens then the airport is a short Metro or taxi ride away, and not a flight away.
Some Pages of Advice about Athens
I just checked and our website has 42 pages about different aspects of Athens, so here are a few you might want to read to help plan a trip. Click on the title to go to the page.
Athens Events and Public Holidays
It helps to know what’s going on in Athens before you book your trip. I call it the ‘you should have been here last week’ advice. It’s a remark you don’t want to hear, especially if you could have been there just as easily last week.
Athens Weather
When’s the best time to visit? We’ve been in Athens in December and January, and had mostly glorious weather. We’ve also been in Athens in August during a heatwave. That was not fun.
Athens in the Rain
Following on from the weather, yes, it does rain in Athens. Not a lot, but it does. Don’t worry, though, as there’s plenty to choose from on those occasional rainy days.
Best Hotels in Athens
If you’re planning your own trip rather than booking it through a tour company, here’s our list of hotels we can personally recommend, from budget to luxury.
Where to Eat in Athens and Piraeus
When planning a trip to Athens, one of our own personal pleasures is thinking about where to eat. We have some old haunts, of course, which we go back to again and again, and these are mostly at the budget end of the scale. You don’t have to spend a fortune to eat good food in Athens.
There are a few places for a special splurge, too, and then part of the fun of planning is trying to find new places that people have recommended.
I’m talking myself into planning another trip to Athens this year!
Till next time, thanks for reading.
Mike and Donna
