Monday evening: - Our flight was scheduled for 5:05 PM and we made it to the gate in about 15 minutes thanks go the combination of Delta One and TSA precheck, I never had a better experience checking in (I also never had a worse experience checking in on the return flight - more on that later)
- We went to both the
Delta Skylounge and the
Priority Pass Lounge. Delta skylounge was beautiful and if I wasnt keeping kosher i would have had a blast. Its great for drinks, but as far as kosher food goes, all they will give you is there kosher airline food. Skypriority lounge on the other hand had a nice selection of kosher products. They gave us a binder with a list of which products were kosher.
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Priority Pass Lounge
- The flight itself was really good. I wasnt able to get much sleep because of the time of the flight, but the lie flat and service was incredible. The foot itself actually was pretty good.
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Tuesday:
- we landed in Athens around 9AM. We arranged from the hotel for a pickup and the driver was waiting for us with our name. It was only a few Euro's more (I believe 44 compared with 38 if we got an uber), it it was worth having this rather than dragging luggage to find a taxi.
- The hotel we chose was
O&B Boutique. We really only got this hotel because we had a $100 expiring Expedia voucher, and because we knew we wouldnt be at the hotel at all since we were flying the next morning to Crete.
- There really isnt much to say about the hotel other than that it was a nice small room, very friendly staff, and a 5 minute walk to the
Chabad Restaurant Gostijo.
- We got to the hotel at around 10-11ish. We put our bags down and were out by noon. Our first stop was Gostijo for an early lunch since we were starving. The food there did not disappoint. Very large portions, so order accordingly.
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- We went to the
Jewish Museum followed by the
Acropolis. The Jewish museum is nice, it was interesting to know how much Greece was actually impacted by the holocaust and how strong the jewish community was prior to the war.
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- The
Acropolis to me was nothing special, i wasnt interested in greek history at all so to me this stuff wasnt fascinating. If you go in the summer, be prepared to be very, very hot. The entire walk to the acropolis is up hill and not so simple. We ran out of water and when we got to the top, there was only one place to buy and it was 12 Euro a bottle. Entrance to the acropolis was also around 35-40 Euro per person.
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- At this point it was around 5pm and my wife wanted to spend some time at the luxury stores. The prices were better than the US. So it made sense if you were interested in something. Some stores will give the full 21% tax back to your credit card in a few weeks, others go thru the airport which comes out to around 12% after commission
- We went back to Gostijo and had dinner and then walked around the main area nightlife. (I forgot the name). Nice place to walk around, see the town, and pickup souvenirs. Considering it was a monday night, it was packed and felt like a Saturday night in times square.
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We went back to our hotel and were in bed by around 10 since we were exhausted and had an early flight at 6:30AM.
Bottom Line: I feel like Athens is a waste, we only did it since we were landing into ATH anyways and figured why not just spend 1 day (which was more than enough). The best part of Athens was the Chabad's Restaurant To be continued...
- Up Next: Crete and Domes of Elounda
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