April 24th: Off to Athens

Time to fly again, and we are headed back to Athens for our last stop.  

Sometimes airports in a different country can be confusing but we are catching on and the airport in Prague is well organized so all we have to do is watch a big ‘o lighted Board and wait for our flight to make the list.  Ah, there it is showing our check-in location and we are off.  

When we booked this flight on Aegean airlines we noticed the upgrade to business class was not big so we grabbed 4 seats and it is already paying off.  The cue for regular folks is long but the one for us special business class is very short.  Boom, we are in with a smile and our boarding pass is stamped “airport lounge passport”.  Cool – let’s find this place.  Kick back, sign on to wi-if, sip a free drink and snack.  

But here is where it gets really fine. 

We board and have a drink in hand within minutes on the plane.  But service has only begun.  Another drink, warm wash cloth,  a snack, a lovely and delicious choice of veal or chicken with more wine.  So good, but wait, here comes desert.  They are so nice!  And this is only a 2 and one half hour flight!  What!   Now they are bringing your choice of an after dinner drink to settle your stomach.  Wow, this airline is a wonder.  And the place is spotless and new.  It will be hard to use our airlines at home that look a bit tired compared – they need to step it up!  

But wait, there is more.  We business class people are let off a separate stairway to the tarmac and into a bus that is pretty common.  But as soon as the 12 or so business folks are on the bus it leaves!  We are at the baggage bin before many people are off the plane and still our bags come whipping off within minutes and we are out the door and headed to the hotel.  

And what a beautiful hotel it is.  We picked the hotel for the view from the bar of the Acropolis but we did not know about the rest – this hotel is gorgeous and everyone looks important.  We check in and throw our stuff in the room and head to the bar to see the view.  Well, it is not just a bar,  this is a lovely roof top restaurant looking directly at the Acropolis and it is breathtaking.  Then they light first the Parthenon and it glows, then the other buildings until the entire top of the mountain is glowing as the sun sets and then the lights on the rocky hillside.  It is amazing and mesmerizing.  We drink two bottles of wine just to soak it up!

So, another thing very cool happened today. Way back when we arrived in Prague in our hired van Clyde reaches into his pocket for his new wallet and credit card and, “Oh S**t, where is my wallet!”  Frantic, checking every pocket 12 times and no wallet.  Van gone, no wallet on the street, no wallet no where.  I sign on to Wi-Fi and pull up the phone app for the  charge cards in the wallet and bam, the cards are shut down before any activity.  Not often, but on this day Clyde was really smart and only had an ATM and one credit card in the lost wallet.  So, no problem, we can go on like nothing happened and the only thing lost was the new wallet I picked up in Salzburg that I really liked.  I reached out to Norbert from our hotel in Budapest and askes that they look for my wallet and he tells me they found nothing.  So then Clyde pulls up wi-fi and Norbert has send an email – they did a searched again and found the wallet!!!  Unbelievable!!  We work out the details and the wallet will be sent home!