Day 25 -- Off to London

After last night's festivities Ari and I both slept in until 9:00. Breakfast included yogurt with home made fog spoon fruit.

I packed while Ari played video games. When I was mostly finished Ari and I went to a local taverna so that I could keep my promise of one more Greek meal. We choose one that was close by and almost always empty. Wasn't the best tsatsiki and salad we'd had but it sufficed.

So once again told me how much he was going to miss Greece. I wonder if he will continue to learn Greek and really apply himself. I fear his desire to continue and matter it will soon be forgotten because children forget that which is not immediate.

We returned home, finished packing, printed boarding passes, and said goodbye to Sasha and Elina.  The family gifted Ari with a book of Aesop's fables in Greek that they think he will be able to read and understand in a year. Eleni gave me gifts for Andrea and a "dad of the year" certificate that she and Giannis signed to hang on my wall. Eleni and Ari talked about learning more Greek via Skype.

Eleni, Vasilis, and Irini drove us to the airport. They waited in the terminal with us until we boarded. We talked about Greek and English and the vacation. I once again invited Vasilis and Irini to visit us in Michigan to learn some English, though with what they have heard about Michigan mosquitoes they probably fear death by blood loss. Facebook posts from my wife about grey clouds of mosquitoes don't help much. Given the size of Kalymnos spiders I'm not sure who has it worse, us or them.

Giannis wanted to make it home from work early to see us off. He didn't make it in time but got to the airport on his motorcycle in time to join the family outside the fence around the runway  and wave to us as we boarded the plane. We could see them following the plane down the runway, on the road that runs parallel, from the airplane window as we took off.

We ate our third meal of the day in the Athens airport where we had three hours to kill. Sushi for Ari and curry chicken noodles for me. It was airport food. We ambled to the gate and sat in the deserted lounge. There were no lines anywhere which was both unexpected and incredibly pleasant. When the empty lounge failed to fill I looked at the screen and found guest they had changed our gate. We hustled over to the new gate and waited. At boarding time they announced a delay die to mechanical issues. More news in an hour they said. After the first hour, they announced more news in another hour. I kept running out to try to message Will, who was expecting us at his London flat because the internet at the airport was horrible and at the gate nonexistent.

Finally, when the second hour was over they announced that they were boarding immediately. We had our fourth meal of the day on the plane; it made me nostalgic for the airport food, though perhaps that was because I was less hungry.

We had an uneventful flight thereafter, followed by baggage claim and immigration. The officer was skeptical of my two night stay and asked a few questions. He snorted when I  told him we'd been in Greece foot a month. Repeated "A month?" in a gone dropping with disapproval and stamped our passports. I didn't stay to argue about whatever  assumptions her made about us.

By the time we arrived at Will's it was 12:30. Ari fell asleep on the floor.

Day 27 and 28 Heading Home

Day 27

In the morning we walked to breakfast, past a coffee shop that had a sign "Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love" to a place called The Early Bird. I told Ari to think about it from the perspective of the worm; sometimes it pays to sleep in.

We packed, made it to the airport in plenty of time, breezed through another airport that managed to keep security lines short, making me wonder why that can't be done in the U.S., flew from London to Athens with only an hour delay, and managed to catch the last shuttle to the hotel.

When Ari was really little I had the horrible experience of traveling with him on a trip from Hawaii to Detroit while he had an ear infection. He was about 18 months old, in a car seat, and very upset. The airline did not seat us all together. I was between Ari and Joshua while Andrea was seated 3 rows behind us. I explained the situation and asked the man seated on the other side of Ari if he would swap seats with Andrea. He refused. A few minutes later he asked, "Is he going to cry like this the whole flight?"

"I don't know," I replied, "I've never flown with an 18 month old with an ear infection before."

That whole debacle was brought back to my memory because Ari began complaining of ear pain in the morning and then on the plane Ari complained that his earache was getting worse. At the hotel he told me it was much worse, "It feels sort of like it's burning." I gave him Advil fort the pain and sudafed to try to clear the eustachian tubes. I decided to let him sleep in rather than run out to see more sights in the morning. I really think I need a Z-pack but the idea of trying to get one seems daunting and it wouldn't start working in time for the flights.

So, that's  where I am now, at the end of a fabulous adventure, lying in bed writing this this while Ari is still asleep, wondering what to do about his ear before we get back on the airport shuttle and begin the long trip back through Frankfurt and Chicago, arriving in Detroit at almost midnight the next day. We'll just stay in an airport hotel once we arrive instead of trying to get home that night.

Day 28

I woke up before 7 but Ari slept until 9:30, when my rummaging through the suitcases woke him. We went looking for breakfast and found that walking to breakfast was not an option so it was the hotel restaurant for us. I walked in to find a breakfast buffet.  I was pleasantly surprised that the greeter just asked for our room number. After the hotel tried to charge 9 euros for internet access, something no other hotel in Greece had done, I was expecting them to offer me a choice of overpriced breakfasts but instead, it looked like breakfast was included like it was in every other place we'd stayed.

Unfortunately, at checkout they had added 17 euros to my bill. I objected to not being informed of the price on advance and the clerk pretended not to really understand my objection. Once I was in the airport, where Wi-Fi was free, I wrote to the hotel, Holiday Inn, and put negative reviews on hotels.com and trip advisor.

On the first leg of or flight, when the time came for Ari's next dose of medicine he happily informed me that  his ear no longer hurt. My relief was palpable.

I really enjoyed this trip immensely, and more importantly I have never seen Ari so happy for such an extended period of time nor have I witnessed him growing so fast intellectually or emotionally, though perhaps noticing both of those things is an effect of being able to pay so much attention to him. I didn't manage to take my backlog of programming projects, learn jQuery, or write the novel that I have wanted to write since freshman year, but none of that is truly important.

Thanks to everyone who read this for putting up with ramblings that were sometimes done with one or two individuals in mind. Join  us on the next big language and culture learning adventure three years from now when we head to China.