Our first trip to Greece was something extra-special (especially given the recent circumstances). We’re sad to be leaving but also happy to think of being home—the past couple of months have been a whirlwind to say the least.
Last pic from Spetses, of the line of intrepid water taxis waiting to race away with you to parts unknownOur ferry back to Athens is huge, feels like an airplane insideHere’s our cab and crazy driver to take us back into historic downtown Athens for our last night. In the background, check out some of these ships—the Port of Athens is freaking huge!A look back at our ferry… seems so serene compared to the taxi ride we’re about to take 😀Temple of Zeus straight ahead!
Hadrian’s Arch at eighty miles an hour
We did at last make it to our final hotel, here’s our nice (if a bit small) balcony overlooking the streetHere’s looking down the streetThis was our lunch-time entertainment: how many waiters does it take to fix an AC compressor when their only tool is a garden hose? (We never found out, because they never did fix it :-D)View upwards from lunchOur hotel is the skinny building in the middle… naturally it somehow still has a lift but we have always taken the stairs instead lolThe hotel is in a great location but it’s pretty weird, ya know, in a very European sense 😀Final Greek salad of the trip 😀These turned out to be the best mussels of the trip, easilyView straight up from dinnerOn the walk back, Sam stocked up for the big plane ride tomorrowAnd we ordered one last dessert 😀Here’s Sam at the bar discussing Greek spellings and pronunciations (seriously!)Here are her notes about what they were going over: the English spelling at the top, then Sam’s try at Greek spelling next, and then the final correct version below. She got every freaking letter correct, just wrote some in uppercase rather than lowercase!
We absolutely loved this amazing trip, but at the same time it’s gonna be nice to go to bed tomorrow in our very own bedroom in Cincinnati! For the return trip, we had painstakingly arranged it such that all three of us would fly Athens to Boston direct—Matt would then be home, and us two would just take a short hop to Cincinnati and be at the house before sunset! It would be a long day but pretty easy, and we went to bed totally relaxed about the return home.
And then we woke up.
We learned that Athens—Boston was delayed maybe two hours. No problem for Matt, but that delay was enough that we would not be able to make our connection to Cincinnati. OK, switch to Plan B and change to Athens—Atlanta which, even though it was over eleven hours (!!) could at least still get us to Cincinnati that night.
Until that flight was delayed by six hours!! No idea how we’re going to get home at this point, but step one was at least get to Atlanta. At the time we finally left Athens, we were almost supposed to be landing in Cincinnati ‘-(
The departure for the Atlanta flight was a really long time away, and so we had a surprise extra day in Athens. “Tough life!” you might scoff, but at this point we’re homesick, we’re wiped, we’ve done everything here that we had hoped to do, and it’s 94 degrees with bright sun here today.
This is the ticket line for the Acropolis today. From our experience, this is at least an hour-long line just to get a ticket, and then probably two or three more hours to get up to the Parthenon—all in the scorching 94 degrees in full sun!We’re grabbing a quick lunch at our fav lunch place, under dark-blue umbrellas very close to all the action. By the time we’d walked here from the hotel, we were already pretty wiltedSam’s pasta salad looked great. I had sea bass carpaccio, which was Sam’s idea for me as I can barely eat anything in this heat. It was excellent but I couldn’t swallow more than a few bites.Sam ordered this wacky “ice-cream” which the (non-English-speaking) staff described as being “from a gum tree”?? But it was excellent, so we took a pic of the menuWe had already checked out of our hotel but had stored our bags here. This hotel was really weird but it had an art deco vibe that I enjoyedArrived at the airport four hours early, just in time to encounter this awesomeness! Always love to see Giannis celebrated!Lego Giannis 😀Good-bye Athens!
Here’s a short write-up of the rest of the trip—I was literally too tired to take any more photos. We finally boarded our Athens—Atlanta six-hours-late flight, and for whatever reason it was one of the most uncomfortable flights I can remember. I could never do more than fitfully doze, the flight seemed endless. We landed at the hellish ATL airport at like 7:00AM our time, caught a Lyft to a really skanky dim airport hotel (courtesy of Delta) for a few hours sleep, then back to the bedlam of ATL security (replete with dogs and literally thousands of people at freaking five in the morning!!) and then somehow made it home.
As I write this it is 2:40PM and I can’t wait to get to bed lol what a disaster of a home-coming. But what an amazing trip, honestly can’t wait to return to Greece!!
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