Our flight is at 12.45pm and a driver will pick us up at 10.30am. We take our last shower, only now discovering that the cold showers we have endured, due to what we thought was the black out, was sometimes caused by the fact that we turned the faucet the wrong way.... With this discovery I finally get to take a hot shower in our 5star hotel. We have our breakfast, a last look at the wonderful view, finish packing, and we're off.
The only advantage that a wheelchair has is that it gets you quickly through an airport. Parked outside the airport humming with straggling lines of youths and families going to Paris, London, Mykonos, and so on, I wait patiently until a uniformed person takes charge of my chair and wheels me past all of that - Oswaldo following in my wake - checks in our luggage, takes us though security and leaves us sitting in the crowded lounge, where Oswaldo takes this picture of me, really to focus on the people behind me, absorbed, like almost everyone else we're seen at rest anywhere, with their phones.
I chat to a nice Lebanese/Australian family that lives in Dubai. Friendly young mum, and dad obviously besotted with his 3 little girls, 10, 7 and 3. We've seen a lot of families traveling with young kids and/or babies, and they all seem so very chill and cheerful. It's nice to see.
Before departure another person comes to fetch me and I am wheeled into a bus, just for us. When we reach the aicraft, Oswaldo is let out to take the stairs and I am hoisted up on a safe platform and helped into the plane. The Greeks have this down. Goes without a hitch.
In Athens the procedure is reversed and a pleasant persom, Dimitrius, wheels me all the way across the street in front of the airport to the Sofitel, where we will spend the night. Our plan is to go to a mall and buy presents, something we haven't been able to do so far, and we're very disapapointed to hear that in Greece everything is closed on Sundays. "Never on Sunday," indeed. I didn't even know what day of the week it was.
When, after a long check-in procedure, we get to our room, we start to laugh - the view couldn't be more different
and in the hotel folder the description is hilarious
But we don't feel like airport French dining and head first to the departure terminal on a fruitless search for presents, and then back to the hotel for the bar, decorated in a style reminiscent of Starbucks, with velvet sofas and chair, and there we have gin and tonics again, that come with a pretty dish of Bugles (I can't remember when I last saw these) and Doritos
Then we share an excellent starter of smoked salmon and lemon grass followed by a Margharita pizza. We haven't eaten anything since breakfast and enjoy our little feast. We try for an early night, but still have to get through the little drama of the 2nd injection of anti-coagulant medicine I have to take for the trip - administered subcutaneously by a somewhat reticent Oswaldo. We'd tried it the night before without a hitch - this time is not so painless... I still have one to go, maybe 2. Not a fan of needles.
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