The Athens Edit
More than a launchpad to the Greek islands
I started The Point in the fall of 2024 when I got a New York Times feature on the cover of the business section. I ran to my hotel room, launched this newsletter — a smart, thoughtful dispatch on elevated travel with points and miles — and never looked back!
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The Athens Edit
We had plans to visit Athens in the summer of 2023 but they unraveled when our youngest ended up in the hospital with a staph infection just hours before we were supposed to leave on our trip (he’s okay now, but it was scary!).
With two Greek mythology obsessed kids and plans to visit both Athens and Hydra (RIP Leonard Cohen), we rescheduled our visit for spring break this year as part of a larger trip to Milan and Malta.
While many transit quickly through Athens on the way to the Greek islands, we made Athens our destination and spent 7 nights in the city — with a day trip to Hydra and a sunset visit to the Temple of Poseidon.
We had a bit of a hectic start to our week in Athens. Our first hotel was not a favorite (to say the least) but we pivoted mid trip which salvaged our time there. We walked thousands of steps a day, visited all the attractions, met up with friends and had a sitter each night to grab dinner without the kids after they went to bed.
Athens is Europe’s oldest capital city, full of history and mythology. With a rule that nothing can be built higher than the Acropolis, it’s a city with unbeatable historic views set against a sea of sprawling concrete apartment buildings that transformed much of Athens in the last century.
In my teens and 20s when I visited Europe, each city had a unique feel. Toilets flushed differently, restaurants didn't serve ice, finding drip coffee wasn't easy and other things felt so unlike what I was used to back home. Things have changed and much of the west now has the same creature comforts but Athens feels like a relic of the (near) past from the moment you step off the plane.
Athens is known for its ancient ruins — but it’s multilayered. There are the ruins, and around them there’s a city relatively newly built compared to much of Europe. From the 1950s to 1970s, the city limits expanded by the day, new construction boomed and the population grew by nearly 75% in less than 20 years.
The post-war architecture brought multi-residence buildings called “polykatoikia”. The dense heavy concrete apartment blocks that went up rapidly changed the look, feel and size of Athens and have a completely different feel than much of Europe.
Athens is uniquely its own, steeped in history and much deeper and richer than simply a launchpad to the beautiful islands surrounding it.
Below the fold you’ll find:
The hotel we’d skip next time (and the one I'd happily pay cash for instead)
Our favorite attractions (and the mistake so many people make at the Acropolis)
Restaurants to head to with or without the kids
Shops you don’t want to miss
Neighborhoods to wander around
and more….
“City of light, with thy violet crown, beloved of the poets, thou art the bulwark of Greece.” - Pinda (518–438 BC)
The four of us flew business class on points