Athens, Greece

Today was a couple standing itinerary items we have in big cities - visiting the market, and the museum of contemporary art.

Varvakios Central Municipal Market is a short ten minute walk north of our hotel. It’s one of the cleanest markets we’ve seen. First we walked through the meat market, took some pics of the butchers with their giant cleavers, almost as big as A4 paper. The fish market is in the middle, and had no fishy smell at all, pretty impressive given its size. The fishmongers were very artistic about n their fish displays, some even adding vegetables for colour.

There’s a fruit and vegetable market nearby which we missed seeing. Later I also read that there’s a spice market too! It’s close by our hotel so we can return to see it another day.

We then walked through the Monastiraki and Plaka neighbourhoods on our way to the National Museum of Contemporary Art (ΕΜΣΤ). The neighbourhoods are more gentrified than Psiri (where our hotel is) and are filled with pedestrian streets, cool cafés and restaurants, and clothing stores. We prefer our location for a hotel as it’s a little less touristy.

We wound our way through the non-grid streets using Google Maps. There were very few other visitors at ΕΜΣΤ, we had most of the exhibits to ourselves.

The theme of the current exhibition is about respect for animals, which was ironic given that we started our day at the fish and meat market. The exhibition was well-curated.

The bonus was the restaurant on the 5th floor of ΕΜΣΤ, with great views of the Acropolis. We split a club sandwich and a salad which was okay, but you’re really here for the view.

Our route home took us past Philopappos Hill, so we took the ten minute detour to walk up to the top. It’s a cobblestone road all the way up. The pic of the Acropolis from the viewpoint is the best one in my opinion, as you get the Parthenon, Propylaea and Odeon of Herodes Atticus all in the frame. We had the viewpoint to ourselves for part of the time we were up there!

Walked back home along the familiar route around the south side of the Acropolis.

We ate at Aesop Fables, very close to the hotel. It was okay, we much preferred the other places we had tried.