The trip

Having recovered from a miniature food bug of some sort, I'm writing this from a balcony in my €30-a-night hotel in Athens, which is pretty Spartan (HEYO GOOD CLASSICISM JOKE IMO) but does mean that I get to blog my idiot thoughts from this view, which is: not terrible!

"Acropolis schmecropolis, how's the baklava" as my father wrote to me

 

After the jump, a quick rundown of my trek to Lesvos, with more about that wonderful island in posts to come. (Spoiler alert: IT'S NICE.) Oh, and a video, cos WHY NOT MAKE A VIDEO.

At the end of spring semester, I'd put all my things into storage and attended commencement... yes, it's true: all the insanity of the year was worth it to see students that I taught gathered in the graduating crowd and realizing I'd been a part of this stage of their journey. I then rolled out directly from commencement to visit some pals down south - my first road trip in my own hateful car! It was amazing to see friends that had been hard to reach prior to having to own my own wheels, camped out as they are in Cincinnati and just outside of Asheville NC. That leg of the trip got cut short, alas, due to a potential covid exposure (which also nixed seeing a third friend in Nashville, though our day will come) and so I hunkered in Wheaton until I had tested negative long enough to sound the all-clear.

I still can't believe they made me stay in the YARD and only communicated via taping signs to the kitchen window! You really can't go home again.

Pretty nice yard tho tbh. (OK fine they didn't make me stay in the yard. Still made me communicate via taped signs tho???)

 

A week of time with pals in Chicago was tremendously good for my heart. For an (extremely mild) introvert (or am I an extremely mild extrovert? It maybe depends on the weather?), I am a deeply social creature, and this semester, starting in the burrow of Omicron and finishing with multiple unpleasantly frantic sprints, did a real number on my "the people who have known me for ages" time, one of those healthy self-reflection groundings that I so need. It made for a pretty exhausting week, ultimately, driving in and out of Chicago every day to see pals, but I don't regret a single mile, as I wanted to make sure I saw all the people I cared about before blasting off on this stupid journey!

 

Stupid it was definitely about to become. The morning my flight left, I got an email from my ferry company in Greece. (Well, the ferry company with whom I booked my trip to Lesvos, I don't actually own any ferry or shipping-vessel companies as of yet.) They were letting me know that due to predicted sailing conditions, they were pushing my overnight ferry back by about 14 hours, meaning that my overnight ferry was now going to be an all-day ferry arriving at midnight. I sighed and scrambled, requesting a refund for the ferry cost (it no longer seemed like a great idea to spring for a cabin with a bed under the circumstances) and booking a flight instead, as well as a hotel on arrival. Costwise, it would be basically a wash (Lesvos accommodations are, at least for now, cheap) and it would get me in Friday night around the time I would have been departing Athens on the ferry, setting me up on Saturday to pick up my rental car and drive to my accommodations in Molyvos as planned. The only downside would be adding a third flight to my itinerary - a real bummer for a dude who has a lifelong aspiration to never fly again if possible!

My dad drove me to the airport, where I sped through security and fell asleep as quickly as possible on my Iberia flight, only really catnapping throughout, and managing to lose my watch at some point overnight. In Madrid, I crawled through the immigration line (my first entry to the EU that I can ever remember with literally no verbal questioning, just a bored glare from the border guard followed by a passport stamp) and, thanks to the structure of my points-redemption flight (economy to Madrid, business to Athens), raced to an Iberia lounge for a shower on arrival, which sounds disgustingly luxurious and is.  (There is a lot of nonsense in the world of business and first class and I hate most of it, but showers-on-arrival are... very horribly tempting things, to me.)

[extremely Giles Corey voice] MORE STAMPS

The flight across the Mediterranean was, strangely, I think, my first - most of my earlier travels having either routed to or through northern Europe instead. It's a gorgeous seascape, dotted with islands and foam and a glossy/matte smear of blue that really whets the appetite for Island Time. Closer to Athens, things get... a little more "ah yes, the world we live in" as you approach and start noticing all the homes and ships with helicopter landing pads marked in bold painted lines. Affluence, from the air! And then, landing in Athens! Whose airport is: basically fine! Although to my great delight I found that Greece in fact regulates the prices of some key essentials, at least in transit spaces like airports and ferries (although some across the entirety of the country), including bottled water! 50¢ bottle of water while I wait for my connection to Lesvos? That's the power of price controls, baby!!!

The airport also convinced me that I'd made the right call to go to Lesvos. As I mentioned in an earlier post, most friends who've been to Santorini have sworn to me that it's worth it, and I do believe them (especially knowing that most places like that are especially atmospheric when the sun goes down and day trippers/cruisers flee). But my instinct that the year of revenge travel was not the time feels borne out in the number of insanely packed lines of mostly-Americans all headed to Santorini or Mykonos. By contrast, my flight to Lesvos was about half-full, and easily a majority of the passengers were Greek. It was a good portent of the week to come.

Next up: Lesvos! In which I meet a number of folk who live there, or who have spent summers there for decades, and in which I also meet: an donkey!!!! WOW WHAT A TIME TO BE READING A BLOG ABOUT YOUR OLD BUDDY PAT