After our several wonderful days in Milos, we found ourselves back in Athens with a planned 24 hour stop before the haul back to a far colder Dublin. I’ve already reviewed our very enjoyable stay at the Periscope Hotel, but thought to focus on what we got up to while in Athens as well.
Things got off to an incredibly rocky start – in a sign, in retrospect, of things to come – when our evening ‘wine tasting’ was abruptly cancelled by text message from the owner due to ‘operation reasons’, offering us instead alternative dates or – after asking for a refund – an offer of dinner (nobody should ever attempt to stop us from a scheduled wine tasting – it doesn't lead to good responses). Neither worked, but ‘George’ went on to not cancel in Viator, who also failed to recognise the event as having been cancelled until we got in touch, and then had to ‘provide evidence’ to, customer care. A refund ended up being processed, but we wound up pretty irate both with the tour provider, and Viator – stay tuned, this wasn’t the only tour disappointment in Athens.
We ended up booking an evening food tour run by True Voyagers (no affiliate link – they do operate on Viator also, but I’m sure they’d rather a direct booking). We really enjoyed this tour; our guide at first instilled a sense of deep anxiety in us by insisting on a group icebreaker, but with that out of the way, things improved dramatically as we set off on a walking tour of town eating and drinking (generously).
Our guide also suggested a few very cool spots along the way, one of which we returned to later in the evening – Couleur Locale – an odd speakeasy-type bar hidden inside an otherwise pretty nondescript office building, with great views of the Acropolis in the distance, along with some pretty wonderful G&T’s to cap off our evenings’ eating and drinking.
For the next morning, after a delicious – and brief – breakfast at the hotel-suggested ‘Queen Bee’ café nearby, we headed off right away for an ‘Acropolis of Athens Tour’, run by Athens Walking Tours. Guess what? More disappointment was on the way – we arrived, ‘checked in’ and as if we were at an airport, were told to step aside; as we watched the rest of our group put on their headsets, meet the guide…and then head off. As they headed off, we were told there’d been a mix-up and they hadn’t got tickets for us. Incredible!
We asked what the options were and were told none, but there’d be an automatic refund forthcoming. It was an incredibly display of carelessness – when I suggested I wouldn’t be recommending the company (as an individual of course, not as a blogger – I haven't yet developed the arrogance required for any sense of ‘do you know who I am' behaviours), the lady agreed, saying she’d do the same. So, off we went…
Bonus content relating to this particular incident; I contacted the company via social media shortly thereafter, and they stated that this has never happened before, and offered any additional tour complimentary as compensation – including in the future. Shortly afterwards, about an hour later, they tried to call, offering a private tour for 1pm. Overall, I’ve very mixed feelings about this incident – we’d already booked an alternative by then, there’s really no excuse for this kind of mishap or the subsequent couldn’t-care-less service; but they did seem to try make a serious effort to resolve after being contacted on social media. I’m also not entirely ignorant to the fact that this may be somewhat because of not wanting to upset a travel blogger, and individual mileage may vary.
In the end, Vannesha managed to very quickly source entrance tickets for both the Acropolis and the Ancient Agora – and we set off right away, with not a moment to lose. Actually that’s a lie; we had a few glasses of wine first, figuring that midday drinks to de-stress was probably the right thing to do.
Of course one needs to be somewhat cultured to enjoy the sights on this – now self-guided – walking tour, but in spite of our likely lack of meeting this requirement, we found it fascinating to spend a few hours poring over sights and structures like the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike, Theatre of Dionysus.
Needless to say, we wouldn’t have gotten lonely up there by any stretch of the imagination, and it was pretty busy.
Finding our way to the Ancient Agora was a comedy, and it was slightly more ancient by the time we managed to arrive, having got the directions hopelessly wrong and ending up circumnavigating the entire site starting from probably about 100 metres from where we should’ve entered.
Again, it was very impressive and so much less busy than the Acropolis – we ended up being very glad we managed to get there in time for an hour or two (not so glad of the long walk, but how and ever), before having to repair back to the hotel, and enjoying a far more tranquil wander around compared to the Acropolis.
And that, sadly, was all we had time for in Athens – honestly the having to deal with, and source alternatives quickly for, the few cancellations really took needed time out of our short 24-hour stop and this was by far the biggest disappointment in Athens. The food, drinks, views and sights however more than made up for it and we’ve learnt our lesson – we probably need more time next round, and less reliance on organised tours for short stops.
