Almost there….thankfully…..

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Well we had a rough trip from Vancouver to London…or rather I had a very rough trip. Maybe we will tell that story later. But regardless…. I’m much better now!!! Although I think Kirk will be keeping me in visual range from now on…when possible…and allowing me a very short time period out of visual range before he panics…. but as I said…I may tell that story later.

Suffice to say we chose to not exit Heathrow airport and go to Hampton Court Palace. Rather, we paid a small fortune to stay in a wonderful bed in a lovely hotel at the airport for four hours and try to catch a bit of rest.

And then we were back on a plane…and this trip to Athens was better….much better. But Kirk wonders why the one time you want the plane to be late in arriving…it is early.

We land and wander down to the customs. Two lines, one long and slow… one short and fast. We hop into the short fast one and people are flying through, the security guard is just waving them in. I start to think….something is wrong here. This guy isn’t stamping any passports. I say to Kirk I think this is the wrong line. Kirk flashes his passport and the guys waves him through, I show mine and he stops me. No…back of the other line. I look confused and point at Kirk, Kirk walks back through, the security guard seems a little surprised, no, we have to go through the other line. Kirks accuses me of ratting him out…. I think it would have been interesting trying to leave when they don’t have you on record as ever having passed through customs.

So we get to the back of the line, really, it isn’t very long anyway. When we get to the desk, the cheery (not) guard doesn’t even look at us. Takes the passports, scans them, stamps them, waves us though without even a word. I suppose I’d be unfriendly at 2:30 am too.

Then we find our luggage, YAY! It arrived! We head for the check in for Aegean Airlines and not surprisingly it is still closed. But we manage to navigate the check-in kiosk, change our seats, and print our boarding passes ourselves.

So now we are in Athens and sitting outside on a lovely cool bench at a balmy 14 degrees at 3:30 am. The air smells so good here. We wandered over to the hotel here, but it was too expensive to justify for a five hour stay. So here we rest on our bench. Watching strange cars at a peaceful hour of the morning.

We are now just waiting until we can get rid of the luggage when the check-in counter opens and we can get on our plane to Corfu at 9 am.

Almost there……..

Eventually we get a little chilly and decide to go in for a coffee…such good cappuccino they make here… forgot how good they were. But before we get a coffee we notice that someone is now at the checkin counter so we head down and a young woman weighs our luggage, checks our passports, writes down our gate number and waves us off…. all the while carrying a phone conversation on with a friend on her cell phone. Not a smile or a word to us. Cheery bunch these.

Head down through the first security checkpoint, unsmiling fellow looks at our boarding passes and passports and grunts us through.

Into the main security screening. a friendly faces smiles and says good morning to us. Pretty much the only person who has communicated with us verbally since we arrived.

Find our gate, site down, plug in the computer to charge the batteries, make some changes to this particular entry, Kirk turns on our borrowed cell phone and installs the Greek SIM card. We have a phone! How novel!

And so we wait. 6 am now…. flight goes at 9:15, only a one hour flight. The sky is lightening and we see our first Greek sunrise. A clear sky here in Athens, according to the weather forecast we are not to be quite so lucky on Corfu. The forecast for the next few days is partially cloudy with chances of rain. We are in Greece….so who cares!?!

So close, so close…..