The trip started off well. We had three hours of sleep due to a late night packing and wrapping up all the loose ends that pop up when you are travelling. Then we made it to our friend Sarah’s house where I ran over her son’s ball. To continue the trend, she got lost driving us to the airport. Amazingly, my wife was entirely calm the entire trip there. For those of you who do not know her, she has a fiery Greek temper.
It actually was not as bad as it sounded. The airport was fine, and our trip from Baltimore to Cleveland was uneventful, and we had just enough layover time to make it to our next connection. That is when the long trip began. We flew from Cleveland to Paris without event. It was about nine hours, and I could not really sleep on that leg. I read a book, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It was pretty good, in the vein of American Gods if you liked that one.
Back to our flights. De Gaulle airport was not as terrible as we had heard. We did not have to take any of the shuttles to other terminals, so our five hour layover was quite a bit more than we needed. Thankfully, we went to the Continental transfer desk, because one of the random workers told us the wrong terminal. We had really good grilled ham and cheese sandwiches at one of the restaurants and Ritsa fell asleep for a little while in the terminal. Oh, and Greeks cannot form a queue. Boarding the plane was a lot like a scene from a cattle yard. I was hoping they had those gates that hold cattle in place so they can be injected with stuff, tagged and whatever. It would have made the experience much more amusing.
I do not remember most of the flight to Greece. I could not manage to stay awake. Of course, by that point, I had been up for about seventeen hours on three hours of sleep. The only two notable things on the plane was the guy with strong B.O. sitting next to me, and the forty-five minute wait we had for them to load a few more meals onto the plane.
The subway from the airport was nice, clean and decently priced. When we got out of the hotel, Ritsa turned us around, but since I noticed the numbers were going the wrong way, so after only a couple of blocks, we turned around and headed the right direction. Ritsa is continuing her tradition of staying near U.S. embassies. We are only a block and a half from the one here in Athens.
We checked in, showered, and then headed out to eat. The guy at the front desk recommended a place called Craft where they had good beer. You may have already guessed it was a microbrewery place. They brought out a small sample of all their beers, and we quickly decided we like the black lager the best. So, we tried to order a two-liter growler of it, purely for the economy of spending three euro more on almost twice as much beer, but they were out of growlers. So, we got stuck with the pitcher. The food was good, and the beer was great. Between the travel and the beer, we fell asleep very quickly that night.
