While planning our trip to Greece, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “why don’t we do this more often?” This meaning travel. Not just weekend getaways and day trips, but true, adventure-seeking-out-of-the-country travel. The first logical answer is money I suppose. We saved for this trip over the course of nearly two years because we wanted to go all out. It’s also worth noting that in my extremely limited experience, going all out is the way to go. Then there’s taking time off work. Time off of life, really. The stress of planning. The 204 hours reading Trip Advisor reviews searching for the best of the best hotel options in your price range.
All that being said, it’s a small price to pay (figuratively, not literally) for the experience of a lifetime.
Just when you start thinking to yourself, this is easy! Let’s do this every year! Where should we go next? Australia? Italy? You’re full of optimism at the first security checkpoint of the day. Then, the day progresses. And your optimism slowly fades to irritation with every stranger’s cough, every baby’s cry, and every cold blast of air hitting your goosebump covered legs.
Aha. This is why we don’t travel more often.
Uncomfortable airports. Even more uncomfortable airplane seats. Gross food. Tiny bathrooms. Smelly people. And don’t even get me started on the lack of sleep.
The funny thing about airplane sleep is that IT’S NOT FUNNY AT ALL. I feel bad even complaining because Brett is 6’3 and his legs are twice the size of mine so his options are limited to 1) sleeping while sitting. I, on the other hand, am able to morph into a human roly poly with all body parts tightly wrapped in a single blanket. But even that moment of serenity is fleeting because within twenty minutes all said body parts have fallen asleep and are tingling like crazy. So there we sit, the roly poly and the giraffe, exhausted and irritable on three different delayed flights trying to maintain our sanity.
After 32 hours (!!!) of traveling without sleep, we arrived at our hotel in Athens at 1:00am. Two long glorious showers later, we FINALLY crawled into bed. I can honestly say, I have never ever been that tired.
Nine hours later, we woke up to breakfast on our balcony with a view of the Parthenon and all was forgotten.
We were in Greece, and that’s all that mattered…
more photos coming soon…
