Yesterday was a very long day. Our traveling started on the afternoon of
Monday June 6th. We were
under the impression that our flight out of Des Moines was leaving after 3
PM, so Dad and I were taking our time getting everything gathered. At about noon Dad got online to check on the
status of the flight and – Surprise! – it had been moved up to 2:30 without our
knowledge. Thus began the mad
scramble. Luckily, Aaron was on call to
give us a ride and we got to the airport with about an hour until the
flight.
We made it to Dallas – Fort Worth Airport at about
4:30 PM. Our flight to London didn’t
leave until 8 PM, so we had plenty of time to grab some dinner, charge our
phones, and do some window shopping. I
found some ridiculously expensive alcohol at the Duty Free store! I didn’t buy any, which is a good thing
because they didn’t let a gentleman with two bottles of vodka into through
security at Heathrow.
The flight from DFW to Heathrow was a little over
nine hours long. We were served a dinner
and breakfast on flight. Neither were
amazing, but what can you expect from airplane food? We also had those little screens on the back
of the seats in front of us. There were several recently released movies
available and quite a few episodes of popular television shows. First, I watched the movie The Longest Ride, based on the book by
Nicholas Sparks. It was horrible. So bad.
It almost got to the point where it was bad enough it had circled back
around to amusing. But, as I said to
Dad, I might as well finish it because what else am I going to do? I watched Avengers: Age of Ultron later
because I knew it was amazing – Thanks, Joss!
About half way through the flight Dad surprised me
with a little birthday present! He
pulled a small, 100 – piece Star Wars Lego set and a birthday card out of his
backpack. What a sneaker! He even came
prepared with a couple small Ziplock bag to put the pieces into. It only took us 30 minutes to put it together,
but it was a lot of fun! We only lost
two pieces!
Unfortunately, our landing in London was delayed
due to cloud cover. We were already pretty
short on time, so we had to book it through what felt like one of those mazes
they make mice do in labs. Hallway after
identical hallway. THEN we had to go
through security again! Even though we never left the airport! Luckily, I asked an airport employee about
whether we would be able to make our connecting flight and he sent us through
the “Fast Track.” It still took us
nearly 45 minutes to make it to our gate.
Then we found out that flight had been moved back as well. Thank goodness! We had just enough time to
catch our breath and go to the bathroom before boarding.
Three and a half hours later and we are finally in
Greece. We managed to get to baggage
claim and find our bags fairly quickly before heading outside to meet Mom and
our taxi driver. There was a 45 minute
drive to our hotel that was actually quite pleasant. It was nice to get a look at a bit of Athens
and the surrounding Greek countryside.
We asked our driver a bit about the financial crisis that is going
on. He said he voted no in the referendum,
but that he doesn’t have any idea what’s going to happen to Greece now. It is all very complicated and confusing and
he would rather leave it to the “politic.”
I don’t blame him. He told us
that the last several years have been very hard on the Greek and now it is
about to get even harder. So far we
haven’t witnessed any difficulty or unrest, but the resort is full of tourists
so I’m not surprised. Mom says that the most visible sign of the problem is the
line at the ATMs (people are only allowed to take out 60€ per day in a, frankly inadequate, effort to protect
the banks).
We did finally get checked into our resort. We are staying in the Eros bungalow at the
Golden Coast Hotel in Marathon. The
resort is on Marathon Beach on the Aegean Sea.
We didn’t have time to do much more than eat dinner (buffet style) and
walk down to the beach last night. The
rooms are nice, but the beds are very hard.
Maybe I’ll just go sleep on the sand! J Today we are working on figuring out how to
get to Athens for our tours and relaxing on the beach!
Some pictures of the resort:
Amelia
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