The Big Trip (Pt 2)
At long last and after nearly 24 hours in transit (or maybe it was 29 hours? I lost count about 20 hours ago), I finally touched down. But where am I? That is a good question. It is a question that has plagued me since I wrote the first update back in October. I am sitting in a nice posh hotel room in Athens, Greece. I came here before starting the rest of a family trip around the Black Sea/Mediterranean area of Europe. The hotel room I’m in is quite nice and not what I expected from Greece. However that said, I expected Greece to be a little bit of a dump, but I was plesantly surprised.
I arrived late last night at around 3am due to a faulty electrical terminal somewhere inside of my plane. The flight was supposed to go from Tokyo to Rome to Athens with only a 35 minute layover in Rome. However after a 5 hour wait in Rome, the plane was ready to go. Needless to say, I was not impressed. When I arrived at the airport, I was greeted by a nice older man who ran a taxi company which I had pre-paid for. Not only was I surprised by the fact that he had a bottle of water and some candies waiting for me in the back of the taxi, but the fact that he waited five extra hours for me. Now that is what I call service!
After a fourty minute drive through Athens (which is a beautiful city by the way, even at night), we finally arrived at the hotel. Not only was it beautiful but everyone was incredibly friendly, the kind of friendliness that you would only find in a four-diamond hotel. Thank god I got a good deal on the rooms price! I lugged my bags into my room, swore to myself as I couldn’t find the light switches, and crashed onto the bed for the next several hours, but jet-lag mixed with nearly 30 hours in transit didn’t make for a restful sleep. Oh well, it didn’t matter anyways since I was on vacation!
The next morning came all too quickly and after fiddling around with a button on the wall, I discovered that out of nearly ninety available channels, nearly a dozen of them were adult-oriented. Oh well, when in Rome… or Greece as the case may be. I took a shower in a very ornately decorated bathroom, shaved up and realized I had forgot my cologne back in Japan. Crap… Now my first order of business is to procure a new bottle of something that doesn’t smell like my grandmother. That proved harder than I had anticipated. Oh well, it’s a new day, a new adventure and I’m ready to take on anything… as I said, I’m on vacation!