A new wave of restaurants, hotels and cultural energy proves the Greek capital is a world-class city in motion.

November 11, 2015 / 8:00 AM EST / CBS New York A trip to Athens, Greece should be high on most anyone's bucket list of international destinations to experience in a lifetime.

There were murmurs of apprehension. Athens is a good-sized modern city, sprawling from the docks at Piraeus across a shallowscoop of plain and into the hills north and east of the harbor.

I went out to Piraeus, Greece's biggest port, to see what things looked like. It's not far from Athens and is the national hub for shipping, one of Greece's biggest industries.