Athens in 48 Hours: The Non-Tourist Version

The first morning: walk from wherever you are staying to the Monastiraki flea market by 8am. Not to buy anything — the antique dealers at this hour are still arranging their wares and are not in selling mode — but to observe. The market on Sunday morning is the city in a compressed, heightened form: a retired lawyer examining a collection of 1960s Greek 45s, a Nigerian man selling bootleg Gucci, a cat asleep on a pile of Byzantine iconography, a smell of coffee and exhaust and something indefinably resinous that is Athens in the morning.

For breakfast: Avocado on Nikis Street opens at 7:30am and is the best café in central Athens, which is saying something in a city that takes coffee existentially seriously. The double Freddo espresso — iced, shaken to a foam — is the correct introduction to the Athenian metabolism. Drink it standing at the bar. Order a cheese pie.

The Acropolis opens at 8am. Be there. The first hour, before the tours arrive from Piraeus, is the Acropolis you thought you were getting when you booked the flight. The second morning: the Benaki Museum on Vas. Sofias Avenue. The Benaki is the definitive collection of Greek material culture from the Neolithic to the 20th century, assembled by a single patrician family and donated to the state. The cafe on the rooftop terrace has one of the best views in Athens and the mezedes are surprisingly good. This is where Athenians go on a Saturday morning when they want to feel good about their city.

The evening. Exarcheia, the formerly anarchist neighbourhood northwest of Omonia, is where Athenians under 35 eat, drink, and stay out too late on weeknights. The squares around Exarcheia Square have a dozen small tavernas of the old type — paper tablecloths, barrel wine, food brought to the table without being ordered because the kitchen decides what is good today. Find one. Sit down. Let them bring you things.

Gazi, further west, is the former gasworks district, now a bar and restaurant neighbourhood built around the preserved industrial infrastructure. The best thing about it at night is that it looks exactly as improbable as it is: neon bars attached to Victorian gasometers, people eating grilled octopus on chrome tables under rusted Victorian ironwork. This is Athens at its most recent and most itself.