The transition from Ios to Paris was painfully stressful. It was like being involved in an episode of ‘The Amazing Race’ – battling against the clock, covering multiple countries, stomach knotted and throat absent of any moisture.
It began with a rushed, last minute, wake up call from “house-keeping” in Ios. The clock started counting down. We had to pack as fast as we could (the space-efficient rolling method was abandoned) in order to make it down to the port and catch our ferry to Athens. Friends before us had missed theirs but despite the financial sting this would have caused, we had a linking flight to Paris that could not be missed. We had left ourselves what felt like an impossibly small window of time within which to work. No margin for error. No time for delay.
Not only did we plan to dock in Athens 90 minutes before our check-in deadline but we planned to go via a previous hostel to forage for lost property. Essentially, we were risking a flight to Paris (replacement value circa €250) to possibly gain back a Noosa singlet, some blue shorts and some undergarments. It must be noted that at this stage I wasn’t even certain of being on the flight due to itineraries being misplaced and emails from EasyJet vanishing into cyberspace. It was hard to remain unruffled.
There were too many things that could go wrong.
We arrived to find we couldn’t get to our lost property anyway because only “house-keeping” had the key and she was MIA. A wasted stopover… We had a cab called for us and conveyed our time constraints. We then sat and watched the clock, entertaining the unimaginable idea of another night in Athens. A honk from outside and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Bags were thrown into the cab and we begged him to drive fast (they take this command very literally in Greece). Hitting 180km/h down the freeway and I was ironically starting to fell more composed and relaxed at this stage.
We ran to the desk and confirmed that I was on the flight. We checked in, high-fived and made our way onto the plane. We arrived in Paris as planned. We won this installment of ‘The Amazing Race.’
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