Athens in October

In October, we went to Crete. It was a great time of year to visit that part of Greece, and while there were other tourists, it wasn’t overwhelming. One day we competed with cruise ship groups at a museum, but moved to another room, then returned when the groups had moved on.

As for Athens, does that mean there are, on average, 4 to 5 cruise ships scheduled there each day? Is that more or less than in July and August? I’d imagine that visiting Athens would be viable, but how long would a non-cruise visitor plan on visiting? The strategy of seeing sights early or late in the day, outside of the cruise shore excursion crowds’ schedules, would make things more tolerable. For the cruise ships, Athens is obviously viable in October!

Athens is a large busy and crowded city at the best of times and can easily absorb passengers from two or three cruise ships per day without any noticeable impact. Acropolis and it’s museum will be busy as will the Plaka area. I was last there in early October 2019, it was busy and hot but it was easy to get away from the crowds…the Agora wasn’t as busy as the Acropolis, Ancient Corinth was empty, the Roman Forum and surrounding area was comfortable, it’s like Venice, get off the main streets and explore the back streets. The National Archaeological Museum was way less crowded than the Acropolis Museum.

Athens is 4 million inhabitants. If you leave the Syntagma, Plaka, Acropolis, Monastiraki area (a square of barely 500 x 500 meters) you have almost no chance of seeing a cruise passenger.