The Ancient City of Athens

Day 1 (9 Nov 2025)

I'd always wanted to visit Greece and last year when I was planning for my trip to Italy in May, I explored adding a cruise portion to the Greek islands. But it turned out to be very complicated and expensive so I tossed the idea because it was too complicated and expensive.

Then while I was at Tung Ling Bible School in the first quarter of this year, they announced that they would be organising a Bible study trip to Greece for the very first time which included a three-night cruise! For some strange reason, my friend Agnes who's a Tung Ling alumnus, popped into my head, so I called her and asked if she would be interested in going on the trip with me. She was super keen and said she had been asking her friends if their churches were organising one!

  

It's like God heard the desires of our hearts 😍 So here I am with my friend Agnes and other lovely Tung Ling alumni. I generally don't like package tours but it's different when you're among friends and God-loving people. Everyone looks out for each other and there isn't the usual ugly jostling and kiasu-ism like with other Singaporeans. 

 We flew into Athens this morning and were instantly whisked away to lunch at a 120-year-old tavern, the oldest and most historical in the area.    

It's a full-fledged Greek lunch which means huge portions of Greek salad with feta cheese, bread and olive oil, fried zucchini and eggplant, loads of meat (beef, chicken and pork), and of course Tsatsiki. This yoghurt based sauce appears at every dish and goes with everything. We also had a fantastic Greek yoghurt dessert with honey and quince. 

We quickly find out that cats are king in Greece. They get to roam everywhere, even into restaurants! They even paw your legs to ask for food. 

After lunch, we started our tour of Athens, the capital of Greece. First, some facts: Greece shares borders with Turkiye, Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It's surrounded by the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea and Lybian Sea. Being surrounded by water, shipping is one of the country's most important industries. Greece accounts for 60% of shipping in the EU and its biggest export is petroleum. Throughout the millennia, Greece has fallen under different rules - the Romans, the Turks, and not to mention various civil wars. They became a parliamentary democracy only in 1947 which struck me as a tad ironic and the Greeks were the ones who invented democracy way back in 6 BC, allowing males to vote in ancient Greece.

80% of Greece is Greek Orthodox Christian (more about this later on). In fact, Christianity is so entrenched in Greece that the cross features on its flag. Which is pretty astounding and poignant if you think about it, because the apostle Paul was the first person to introduce Christianity to Greece and he met with a lot of opposition then. He meant to go to Asia Minor but he was stopped by the Holy Spirit and had a dream to go to Macedonia instead (which is Greece today). 

"During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them." - Acts 16:9,10 

Paul travelled throughout Greece preaching God's word, and in this trip, we would be retracing his steps. But first, Athens. Greece has a population of 11 million people and about half of them live in Athens. It's one of the oldest cities in the world, about 4,000 years old. Athens has 7 hills, we went up the tallest one - Lycabettus Hill. 

 

First, we had to walk up steep slopes that went on forever. Then they told us we had to walk 100 steps. One of the group mates said indignatly, "It's not 100! I counted more than 200!" It felt like 500 🥵 Bearing in mind we had just disembarked from 15 hours flight time - hiking up Athens was not what we were counting on.

 

Anyway, after the climb, there was a ride in the funicular for the final ascent.  

 

Made it to the summit! And what a view of Athens.

 

 

There are several iconic sights. First is the Acropolis (which means "high city". Even though it was not the highest point in Athens, it was the strategic fortress and religious centre of Athens within the ancient city). You can see the Parthenon temple on top.

 

We could also see the stadium where the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896.

 

Quite coincidentally, we happened to be in Athens the day before the marathon was to be held so many of the roads were closed to traffic. I thought it was quite momentous to be in the city where the marathon was first started - in Greece, during the first Olympic Games. The marathon ends at the stadium.   

 

Because of the road closures though, we ended up having to walk everyone since the bus couldn't get through. Quite odd to see all the roads so empty.

 

The guide showed us some sights in Athens including the changing of the guard in front of Parliament building.

 

We also saw the Academy of Athens which had statues of Athena and Apollo, gods of wisdom and the arts respectively, right up front. 

It is also flanked by seated statues of Plato and Socrates, fitting I guess, since this is the highest research establishment in Greece. 

 

 

Finally, the bus picked us up and dropped us at the Stanley Hotel for dinner.

 

 It's clean and reasonably sized for a hotel in the city centre. No complaints!