What follows is the day-by-day breakdown of our two week trip to Greece, starting with...
DAY #1
We started our honeymoon with an early 4:00am wake-up call Monday morning to get to the airport for our 6:30am flight. Our flight path took us from San Diego to New York to Athens, for a total of about 15-16 hours (including layover). With the time change (Greece is 10 hours ahead of the west coast), we ended up arriving late morning the next day (Tuesday). I will talk about the Monday travel day in this post, and get to Tuesday in the next one.
While in the outrageously long security line (at 5:00am), I noticed an interesting glitch in the line system. When it got close to the time of someone's flight (say, 5:35am), the airport staff would walk the line and ask anyone boarding the 6:00am flight to get out of line and go to the front of security. Now, being the responsible travelers, Julie and I got to the airport at 5:00am (1.5hrs early) to make sure we got through the line, and we weren't even checking bags. You can imagine how many people we watched get pulled out of line in front of us and behind us during the time we spent in line. But...
Now I understand that if it's close to your flight and you haven't made it through security, you are in danger of missing your flight and it is very considerate of the airport staff to make these adjustments. That being said, when they make their announcement, there are people just getting to the back of the line who benefit from this. So while Julie and I get there in plenty of time to stand through this long line, someone who comes last second before their flight immediately gets rewarded and pulled to the front. I am not sure I have a better system, I just find it odd that the unprepared traveler gets bailed out and the prepared traveler has to sit through all the lines. But I digress.
Before I get too far into the details of the travel, it should be noted here that Julie deserves 100% of the credit for planning all the details of our entire trip. Having not traveled much internationally, I happily defaulted to Julie and her immense travel experience to set up our trip. Everything from flights to hotels to ferries to food suggestions, she took the bull by the horns and planned an incredible trip for us. She killed it.
On our flight to New York, it didn't take long for us to notice what was sure to be the first of many funny little things that happened along the way. After Julie and I sat down, someone sat down in the row ahead of us and Julie's tray table immediately fell open. The latch on her table had come completely off, and each time it fell, we had to jerry-rig this thing to just barely stay put and hold the table. And this thing fell open every time someone in the row ahead of us moved. And, as you can imagine on a cross-country flight, with people getting up and down to use the restroom, stretch their legs, adjust their seat, or get something from the overhead compartment, Julie spent half the flight putting the table back in its "locked and upright position."
After a very odd breakfast of a chickpea and egg filled danish and fruit, the remainder of the flight went without incident and got to New York on time. We transferred over to our 9-hour flight to Athens, and there I was elated to find that I had my own personal TV for the flight (I know, I'm a travel rookie), so I watched three movies (Goodfellas, The Avengers, and something else awesome that I can't remember). For someone who has horrible problems sleeping on planes, the option of movies to keep me occupied was a very exciting and welcome one.
Obviously this will most likely be the most boring of the blog posts, since it's just a post about airplane travel. But stay tuned for the next post, where we land in Athens, meet a bizarre trio of hotel employees, explore the local shops, gawk at the Acropolis from afar, and begin our minor obsession with saying "cheese pie."
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