A one word summary of our travels so far: Delayed As in, our Virgin Atlantic flight out of SFO was delayed for an hour right off the bat, then further delayed coming into Heathrow. No problem, we told ourselves, we have plenty of time to catch our flight to Athens, since we scheduled a 3 hour layover instead of trying to rush to catch an earlier flight. But alas, when we checked in for the Athens flight, we got the delightful news that the flight is delayed 2 hours, which finds us here, sleeping on benches in Heathrow’s lovely Terminal 2. We won’t arrive in Athens now until around midnight, which means our plan to take the metro to our hotel will not work, since the metro stops at 11:30. We have been assured by a woman at the information desk that we can take a bus, and that we should then “go to the Ermou Square, find the only street that is just only pavement, follow it to the church, and then the location of our hotel will be behind the church.” We think we’ll probably have to ask for directions again when we get there. If I do say so myself however, we are in quite good spirits. We are both exhausted, but have many diversions to keep us entertained, including our newly inaugurated high-stakes cribbage tournament (score so far: Erin and Loretta tied with one game each), a fascinating National Geographic article about malaria, and of course ipods, books, etc. On the plane, we had the additional diversion of two blond, pig-tailed girls sitting in front of us, about four and two years old. They weren’t angels, but they did delight in making their dolls dance on Lo’s head, the oldest one telling us about visiting her Grandma in London, the younger one, Lily, just smiling and saying mostly unintelligible things, but in a charming British accent.
We were given 5 pound voucher by the airline to spend at the food concessions here as a “We’re so sorry you’re stuck here for an extra two hours” gift. The airline (Olympic) is so low-tech that it’s just a piece of paper with “L 5” written on it. The security guy joked that we could just take a pen and add a “1” to increase our dinner’s value…hmm. Tempting. 5 pounds doesn’t buy much.
Cheers for now…
E
7 comments:
glad you made it over the sea! miss you both already!
This "live blogging" is great! I have a feeling this blog may be a cut above the rest. But enjoy it before blogging it, pal!
glad you're keeping your spirits up despite the delays -- we thought about you as we were eating breakfast today -- wondering where you were at -- i'm sure the blonde british girls loved playing with you both!
Hey Ladies - so glad to hear you're entertaining yourselves - slow and occuppied might need to be your motto for this trip - lots of love coming your way from me - can't wait to hear how you got to your hotel. ciao bellas - g
the directions from the Athens airport to the hotel sound a little sketchy. Along with Gretchen, I'm curious to hear how that little adventure plays out. You'll have to ask Dana C sometime to tell her story about arriving in Sofia, Bulgaria in the middle of the night and having no hotel reservations.
wasn't it annoying to have small children next to you on the plane? blonde or no, cute accents or no, that's a long time to have toys dancing on one's head. what's your favorite ipod tracks right now?
yes, the cutie british girls were of course sometimes annoying, especially when the littlest one was screaming for a while....as for ipod tracks, well EuroMix 4 is a big hit (thanks, Pete, and in our hotel room we've been listening to some random soothing stuff...i think my friend had intended to give me a CD before I left...too bad that didn't work out. :)
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