The Labyrinthine Wedding – Day 1

We are finally leaving to take a vacation.  Although I’m not sure how much of an actual vacation it might be.  We are traveling to Greece for my brother-in-law’s wedding.  But also whenever we go to Greece, my mother-in-law gets so excited that she tells everyone she knows, and I mean that literally…family, friends, the plumber, the electrician, my wife’s sixth grade math teacher, a man and his wife that she met once when she treated them for some illness…everyone.  And all of those people feel either happy or obliged to come over and share coffee and cake with us.  So, it sometimes feels as if we’re just a three-headed monkey on display at a freak show.  Needless to say, that it can easily feel less relaxing and more exhausting instead.

But we’re doing it, and I’m definitely looking forward to a break from work.  We haven’t taken a true vacation in four years, so it’s long overdue.  AND I’m finally going to get to see something other than mainland Greece for the first time in 20+ years.  My brother-in-law is getting married in Crete and then we are traveling to Cyprus to see my mother-in-law’s homeland.

My wife decided to try a new route this time, and we flew into Atlanta and from there straight to Athens.  I think I prefer this trip to any other we’ve taken.  The Atlanta airport was nice and easy to navigate.  It was a much better experience than most of the hubs we’ve hit in Europe.  We got seats together and didn’t have to share the row with anyone on both our flights, so that was nice.  I could get up and pee as many times as I wanted without having to contortion myself over a sleeping stranger.  Troy managed to sweet talk my wife into giving him the window seat, so he could look outside.  But after two minutes, he closed the window shade, put on his headphones, and started to watch a movie…yeah, he’s one of THOSE people.

Troy did fantastically again on the flights.  I got him a pair of headphones, and he watched movies for a good portion of the time.  When he finally got tired, he stretched out between my wife and I with his head on her lap and his feet on mine.  He then slept for several hours while I watched over his sleep.  My wife also caught some restless sleep whenever she could find a comfortable spot for a little bit of time.  I caught up on some of the movies I’ve been waiting to see. 

We should finally arrive in Athens tomorrow.