Greece · Itinerary · Updated September 2026
5 days in Greece: Athens, Delphi and Cape Sounion
Five days will not carry an island. The ferry alone is three hours each way, and two nights somewhere is one real day there. This route stays in Athens and travels out from it. Fares and fees checked September 2026.
Oleksandr Troitskyi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Length
5 days
Budget
€835 / $968
per person, mid-range
Best season
Apr–Jun, Sep–Oct
Athens in August is brutal and half the city is shut
Stops
4
one hotel, no ferries
The route
Four nights in Athens, with Delphi and Cape Sounion reached and returned from in a day each.
Day by day
Days 1–2 · Athens
Two days for the city, and the Acropolis booked from home
The Acropolis is €30 with **mandatory timed entry**, capped at 20,000 visitors a day, and it sells out five to seven days ahead from June to August. Book it before you fly and take the first slot. By eleven the rock is full and there is no shade on it. The Acropolis Museum takes the afternoon. Day two is the rest: the Ancient Agora, Anafiotika's lanes, the Monastiraki market, and Filopappou hill at sunset for the view of the Acropolis you cannot get from standing on it.
Sleep: Koukaki or Plaka. Four nights in one bed is the point of this itinerary.
Day 3 · Delphi
Three hours out, and worth every one of them
KTEL buses run from Liosion station, about three hours for €14.50–19 each way. Entry is €20 and covers the site and the museum together, which is the right way round: see the bronze Charioteer in the museum first, then walk up the Sacred Way to the temple where the oracle sat. The setting does most of the work. The whole sanctuary is stacked up the side of Parnassus above a sea of olive trees.
Sleep: Back in Athens. Delphi village is pleasant and not worth the packing.
Day 4 · Cape Sounion
The temple that watches the sea, at the right hour
An hour and a half down the coast by KTEL bus from Athens, and €20 to get in. Go for the late afternoon: the Temple of Poseidon stands on a headland with water on three sides, and sunset from the columns is the thing people come for. Byron carved his name into one of them, which the guides will show you and the archaeologists would rather they did not.
Sleep: Back in Athens again. The last bus returns in the evening.
Day 5 · Athens, and out
The morning you did not spend packing
Because nothing moved hotels all week, the last morning is real: the National Archaeological Museum, which holds what the Acropolis Museum does not and is the best museum in the country, then the metro straight to the airport from Syntagma.
Sleep: Nowhere. This is the day you leave.
Best things to do on this route
If you cut the trip short, these are the ones to keep.
- 01
The Acropolis on the first slot of the day
€30 and timed. At eight it is cool and half empty; by eleven it is neither, and there is no shade anywhere on the rock.
- 02
The Charioteer of Delphi
Bronze, life-size, eyes still inlaid, and included in the same €20 as the site. See it before you walk up, not after.
- 03
Sunset at the Temple of Poseidon
A headland with sea on three sides. Time the bus for the late afternoon and stay for the light.
- 04
The National Archaeological Museum
The Mycenaean gold, the Antikythera mechanism, the bronzes. Consistently skipped for the Acropolis Museum and consistently better.
- 05
Filopappou hill
Free, ten minutes from Koukaki, and the view of the Acropolis the Acropolis cannot give you.
Where to stay
Neighbourhoods rather than specific hotels. Prices move, areas don't.
Athens: Koukaki
Quiet, walkable, five minutes from the Acropolis Museum and on the metro line to both the airport and the bus stations.
Athens: Plaka or Monastiraki
Prettier, louder and dearer, with the Agora and the markets on the doorstep. Better if you would rather walk than take the metro.
What it cost
Per person, 5 days. International flights not included.
| Category | Cost |
|---|---|
| Accommodation: 4 nights, one hotel | €360 / $417 |
| Food and drink | €250 / $290 |
| Activities and entry fees | €100 / $116 |
| Buses, metro and airport transfers | €70 / $81 |
| SIM, laundry, everything else | €35 / $41 |
| Climate resilience fee | €20 / $23 |
| Total | €835 / $968 |
Converted at €1 = $1.1593, checked 2 September 2026. About €167 a day, and the transport line is why it is the cheapest route on the site: €70 covers five days including two long day trips, because there is no ferry and no flight. The entry fees are the verified ones: €30 Acropolis, €20 Delphi including its museum, €20 Cape Sounion.
Getting around
Everything here is a bus or the metro
Delphi is a KTEL coach from Liosion station, about three hours and €14.50–19 each way. Cape Sounion is an hour and a half down the coast road. The airport is on the metro from Syntagma. No ferry, no hire car, nothing to book beyond the Acropolis.
Book the Acropolis before you fly
€30, compulsory timed entry, 20,000 a day, sold out five to seven days ahead in peak season. It is the one ticket that cannot be bought on arrival, and missing it costs a fifth of this trip.
Time Sounion for the afternoon, not the morning
The temple faces open water and the whole point is the light on it. A morning visit is the same ruin without the reason people go.
Organised day tours are usually worse value
A Delphi coach tour runs several times the bus fare and adds a fixed schedule to a site that rewards lingering. The public bus is slower to book and better to use.
Packing notes
The things that are annoying to find locally, or that people forget.
- Shoes with grip. Delphi is stacked up a hillside on uneven stone and Sounion's headland is loose rock.
- A hat and real sunscreen. There is no shade on the Acropolis, at Delphi, or at Sounion.
- Timed Acropolis tickets bought from home, before anything else.
- A light jacket. Sounion is a headland and the wind gets up as the sun goes down.
- Cash for the KTEL buses and village tavernas, though Athens itself takes cards everywhere.
Why there is no island
Because the ferry costs more than it looks. Piraeus to Naxos is 3h15 each way, plus getting to the port, plus checking in and out. On a five-day trip that is most of two days spent moving, in exchange for two nights somewhere, which is one real day there.
You would come home having seen a harbour front and a beach, and not Athens.
Athens is the thing five days is actually enough for, and almost nobody gives it that. Two days in the city, two of the best day trips in Greece, and a last morning in the National Archaeological Museum is a fuller trip than the same five days split with a ferry in the middle.
If the island is non-negotiable
Do not compress this itinerary. Take the 7-day route instead. It puts four nights on Naxos, which is the minimum that makes an island worth reaching, and still leaves two for Athens.
Five days with an island bolted on is the version people regret.
Delphi or Sounion, if you only want one
Delphi if you care about the place itself: it is the better site by a distance, the museum is extraordinary, and the setting on Parnassus is the reason the Greeks thought it was the centre of the world. Six hours of bus for it, though.
Sounion if you want an afternoon rather than a day: an hour and a half each way, a temple on a headland, and the sunset that ends it.