The trip to get here was a long long day. As mentioned previously, I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to walk to the Gare du Nord station and catch the night bus to the airport. This was a bad idea. I feel pretty confident walking in cities in general, even at night, but with all my stuff and not quite knowing the lay of the land, I was definitely nervous. It was not quite a mile. I don’t recommend it. I couldn’t find the bus stop at all and simply wandered about until it was time for the bus to come, at which point it went flying past me and I had to chase it for 4 blocks. I was in the completely wrong spot. Turns out Google Maps does not accurately know all bus stops.
Things were mostly uneventful after that, although my flight from Paris to Rome was delayed enough that I just barely made the connection. I literally walked off on plane and into the boarding line for the next without stopping anywhere along the way. The Rome to Athens flight was filled with Texans who all knew each other, and they were so loud on the shuttle to the plane (weird) that I was worried they would be loud the whole flight- but they weren’t, and I was sort of able to doze.
When I landed in Athens I found a taxi to go to the port of Rafina, I was 4 hours early for my ferry but just did not have the energy to wander around Athens, so I figured sitting in a quiet port town would be nice. It was. Rafina is pretty run down it seems, outside of the dock area, but it was nice to explore a bit. I had lunch (a HUGE plate of shrimp, fries and tomatoes), and then walked the streets until 3:30 when they would let me board the ferry. It was incredibly windy and my taxi driver said something like “sure is choppy! Have fun!”
The ferry was huge and I didn’t really know what to do or where to sit, so I just found a spot on the deck, put my head on my suitcase and passed out for awhile. When I woke up quite a few passengers had boarded.
The ferry ride was nice, but longer than I had anticipated- almost 4 hours. There is a lot of beautiful scenery, most of which you are a bit too far away from to really see properly. I spent a lot of time on the deck while it was still light out, taking photos and just letting myself be blown about by the ridiculous wind. The only thing even remotely like it that I’ve experienced was when Eric Tal and I took a ferry up the fjords from Bergen to Flåm in 2005. Every photo I took ofyself has my hair blowing around like a crazy person.
Some scenes from the boat:
Stopping in Andros
After dark I went downstairs to charge my phone for awhile, and fell asleep again, then woke up when the captain was saying “all passengers for Tinos please disembark!” After a 4 hour ferry ride I nearly missed my stop- because if you’re not paying attention you can’t tell when the ferry is or is not moving! It rocks from side to side no matter what. Imagine waking up and discovering I was heading back to Rafina. Yikes.
But luckily I grabbed my stuff and made it off the boat in time, and there were David and Willa Marie waiting for me! Hurray!
For those of you who don’t know me that well, David is my cousin on my mom’s side, the second oldest of my cousins. I think he is 12 years older than me. He and his wife Jessica and their 13 year old daughter Willa Marie (some of you may remember her as the red-headed baby that used to visit our apartment in college) live in Chicago, and are taking 8 months off of life to travel the world on a Jubilee. Their trip is broken up into for parts, and Greece is the third part. They put an open invitation out for family to join them at various places, and as I’ve always wanted to go to Greece, I took them up on it. It was the impetus for my entire trip, and I’m so grateful they were willing to have me stay. It’s been so lovely here.
So that’s the story of my epic travel day between countries. Not super interesting, perhaps, but it felt so monumental at the time somehow. Woke up at 2:30am in Paris and ended the day driving through a darkened island on tight streets at “goat speed” (so as not to hit goats), then collapsing into bed in a beautiful white-washed farmhouse looking out over the Aegean. I love it here.
More soon!
Cameron
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