We flew from Athens to Turkey to Houston to New Orleans. Long day. I think it was about 20 hours of travel.

The airport in Turkey had an incredible club lounge. We didn’t have much time to spend there, but it was HUGE with a ton of food, drinks etc.

The other thing about the airport in Turkey is that the security situation was super annoying. We didn’t have to go through the general security because we didn’t leave the secure zone but the gate had a completely separate security check. AND, they had two separate lines for men and women. I guess it’s a cultural/religious thing. Justin and James went together, and I went separately. I found it all very inefficient, annoying, and aggravating. They made me take my tablet out of the case (which I didn’t even know how to do). They also made James take his out, but Justin (who had tons of electronics, camera equipment, computers etc) had to do nothing.

Clearly, I was showing too much attitude because Justin gave me a look that told me I better shape up before I wind up in a Turkish prison. THEN, when we were boarding the plane, they told Justin that he had to sit in another seat and didn’t give any more information. Justin goes through alot of painstaking work to book our flights, so that was super annoying. We ended up talking to the flight attendant and everything worked out.

Other than that, the flight was very nice. The food service was very fancy. Justin warns us that we may not be able to fly like this forever. Airlines are making it harder and harder to use these reward miles….. and finding 3 reward seats is getting nearly impossible. But, we will enjoy it while it lasts.

We got home around midnight (New Orleans time). Jet lag hit James and I hard.

Justin had no leg lag. 😡

Our flight from Crete to Athens was quick and uneventful. We were only spending one night in Athens mainly because that’s where we were flying out from.

We stayed in the Grand Hyatt in Athens. It was a nice change of pace to be back in a hotel. As much as we love the space of vacation rentals, hotels are so easy and the amenities are always appreciated.

There was a very nice club lounge that we all enjoyed.

The main activity in Athens was to visit the Acropolis. It really is incredible. I was a little concerned about the uphill walk with James, but he was a trooper. It was definitely the most touristy thing that we did, but it was well worth it.

When we got back to the hotel, we took our Covid tests and prepared for the journey home. We were sad to leave but definitely ready to see Rex and return to normalcy.

Well, I decided I better wrap up these blog posts on Greece. I pretty much got lazy at the end of the trip and abandoned my blogging 🤣

But, we had some really good moments that are worth writing about.

On our last day in Crete, we traveled to 2 different towns: Aptera and Chania.

Aptera had some ancient ruins that were pretty cool. I can’t remember much detail about the ruins, but I do remember James complaining about the heat 🤦‍♀️

After Aperta, we drove to Chania.

Chania is an old town with some influences from Venice, Italy. It’s on the water, and we enjoyed walking around the town and the Port. There were many spots in the middle of the town that turned into dig sites for ancient ruins.

We also visited an old Greek church in the center of town and ate at an awesome restaurant called Columbo Kitchen.