Which statement is true . . .

1. When the 9TS and I married in 1997, Katie was seven and had been through a rough divorce. Not exactly the time to leave her and take off on a honeymoon.

2. The 9TS has always wanted to go on a cruise but since I get seasick putting one foot in the bathtub, a cruise is out of the question.

3. Visiting the Greek Isles has been on my bucket list since I was in high school and one of my friends spent the summer in Greece as part of the American Field Service program.

Did you choose all of the above? Just curious, because if you did, you were right. But Katie is an adult, they make Trans Derm patches and at 60, if I don't start working on my bucket list, it isn't going to happen.

So . . . At noon we were picked up by the transfer company and unceremoniously dumped off at OIA. We checked in with United and wandered to the gate, only to find that our flight to Dulles was delayed so long that we would miss our connecting flight to Munich by more than two hours. Which means we would also miss our connection on Aegean Airlines to Greece and then of course, miss the not so proverbial boat. ACK . . . not an auspicious start. I frantically called the cruise hotline and they rebooked us through Chicago leaving at 3:30. Small problem . . . it was already 3:32. A second call and they booked us leaving OIA for Frankfurt and connecting on to Athens. If there were no delays, we could catch the boat . . . maybe. So we ran back to United, reclaimed our bags, took off for Lufthansa and gate sat once again. Frankfurt airport has to be the craziest layout. Our departure gate was a good mile from where we arrived . . . nothing like a little exercise to get the kinks out of our legs. It wasn't long though before this was the sight out our window.



A representative from the cruise line met us at the Athens airport (now June 5) and literally threw us in a cab. Our cabbie, although really friendly, didn't speak much English and my Greek is non-existent. What we did gather was that we were hitting rush hour traffic and so he was going to take back roads. What he didn't mention was that he was going to do so at breakneck speeds down tiny little alleys with inches to spare between us and parked cars, us and pedestrians, us and big buses, us and anything that got in his way. But to his credit, he got us to the boat 45 minutes before sailing.

We had missed the life boat drill, missed the reception but we made the boat and it wasn't long before we sailed out of port, patch in place, staring at this glorious sunset.