Legend has it that the King of the time held a competition to name a particular city in Greece. He declared that the Gods & Goddesses should present him a gift and the best one would have the city named after them. Poseidon tried to give fresh water but only sea water came. Athena gave him a tree – an olive tree – and the rest is history…

My Mum, (the history nerd), has wanted to go to Athens for ages and this trip ended up being perfect timing for a ‘Mother-Daughter’ quality time trip so we woke up on Sunday morning ready for a day of exploring, starting with a tour of the Acropolis. We booked this one and our tour guide, Rina, was excellent. The Acropolis is actually the hill, (the word ‘acropolis’ means ‘highest point in the city’, although Mount Lycabettus is higher), and the building that everyone refers to as the Acropolis is actually the Parthenon. It was a temple built in honour of the goddess Athena, that has been standing since 447 BC.

It never occurred to me that the Parthenon would have had vibrant colours and a whole roof. It’s also never occurred to me that the unmistakeable pillars aren’t perfectly symmetrical. They were purposefully built curved & tilted. It’s actually an optical illusion as the human eye sees it as harmonious so it looks perfectly symmetrical.

The tour has so much more than just the Parthenon, including Dionysus’ Theatre, (the ‘party animal’ god), and the temple of Asklepios, (the god of medicine), where we get the medical sign with the snake.

After our tour, we walked around the outside of the Roman Agora’s and then the Plaka area to buy some souvenirs. Our final stop was the Panathenaic Stadium which was even better than expected. As a big athletics stan, I was the most excited for this and it absolutely did not disappoint. It’s so much more than just the stadium that you see on the outside, which is impressive itself. There’s a whole museum inside that has a rundown of the history of the Olympic Games with the torches from each in too. Honestly, this was an 11/10 and a big highlight of the trip for me.

Dinner was at Strofi, an Athenian rooftop restaurant with a stunning view of the Parthenon. I can imagine this is 10/10 in summer when it’s open but it was still a great experience with the roof and windows closed. We had a delicious meal, chatted for ages and finished off with mastiha on the house, a classic of any good Greek restaurant.

The next day was a long hard, day of relaxing by the lake but we’ll get to that…