Hello Friends,
My travel in Greece came in early 2022, on a long slow route back toward Vietnam — and it turned into some of the best unplanned travel I have ever done. Two cities, mostly on foot, very little booked in advance: Athens and Thessaloniki. This is the index to everything I wrote while I was there, plus the planning I have done since for the rest of the country I still want to reach.
Start with the overview of the whole trip, or dive straight into a city below.
Athens, On Foot
I walked Athens into the ground, and it rewarded every mile. The ancient sites are the headline, but the real city is in the street art, the parks, and the long climbs for a view. Here is Athens the way I actually saw it.
- A Hike Up the Acropolis
- Across Athens and Up Mount Lycabettus — the whole city on foot in a day
- A Long Walk and Its Street Art
- The Free Walking Tour of Athens
- Hadrian’s Library & the Horologion
- The Changing of the Guard
- Pedion tou Areos Park — the big green space nobody sends you to
- The National Archaeological Museum
- The National Gallery (Alexandros Soutsos Museum)
Thessaloniki, in the North
Thessaloniki is Greece’s quieter second city, and I loved it — a working port town with a museum ship, a Byzantine tower, contemporary art, and even a circus. It gets a fraction of Athens’ visitors and deserves far more.
- Thessaloniki, 2022 — first impressions of the north
- The HS Velos Museum Ship — a destroyer with a genuinely strange history
- The Trigonion Tower
- MOMus Museum of Contemporary Art
- A Circus Show, “Gelsomina Dreams” — the old circus guy could not resist
Getting Around & Local Life
A couple of pieces that do not belong to one city — how I got between them, and a Greek tradition I got to be part of.
- Athens to Thessaloniki by Train — timings, cost, and whether it beats flying
- Celebrating Clean Monday (Katheri Deftera)
Planning the Rest of Greece
Here is where I am honest with you: in 2022 I only made it to Athens and Thessaloniki. The islands, Meteora, the Peloponnese — I have not reached them yet. But I plan trips obsessively, and these guides are the research I have done for a return, written to be genuinely useful. When I get there, they will become first-hand write-ups like everything above. For planning your own travel in Greece, the Greek National Tourism site is a solid official starting point.
- The Complete Greece Travel Guide
- An Athens 3-Day Itinerary
- Best Time to Visit Greece
- A Greece Travel Budget Guide
- The Greece Island Hopping Guide
- Best Greek Islands for First-Timers
- Northern Greece: Meteora & Mount Olympus
- Peloponnese Wine Country
Efharistó: Final Thoughts on Travel in Greece
My travel in Greece was the trip where I did the most walking and the least planning, and it worked out better than it had any right to. If you have wandered any of these places yourself — or think I am missing something I have to see on the return trip — I would love to hear it. Cheers.
