“We have a strenuous week ahead,” I said. Emily’s face showed the dismay. Sure, at this point, anything that involves managing more than two errands in a day – on foot, in a straight line, within less than a city block – has become strenuous.
But this coming week has been off in the distance until now. It’s peeking out from around the corner and we both realized we’re excited and dreading it at once.
Friday morning, we go to the Istanbul airport and head in two directions – Emily to Los Angeles and me to Cannes. While we’ll miss each other, we’re both excited about our destinations. Emily is so excited about being there for our nieces’ birthday party. I’m going to Cannes, France – enough said.
The dread comes with the travel involved. Wednesday we ferry from Samos to Kusadasi, Turkey where we catch an 11pm bus to Istanbul. Nine or so hours later, we arrive in Istanbul, exhausted and sick of sitting. Then we have work to do, a couple of errands we’ve been saving for Istanbul and we’ll need to get some sleep…because we’ll be up at 3am to be at the airport by 4:30 am.
And while my flight sequence will be five hours from start to finish including a layover in Rome, Emily flies for 14.5 hours with a six hour layover in Munich along the way.
Given, we’re not people anyone should pity – it’s a three day marathon of travel spanning four countries a person. There’s also not much attractive about the idea of another long, overnight Turkish bus ride.
So, this weekend we have begun bracing ourselves for what’s to come.
This may be part of why we really seem to want nothing in particular out of Samos. For the first time, we’re not hungry to check out everything on the island. We have just been walking around, looking, appreciating, and making regular stops to enjoy Samos wine by the water.
Today, we will rent a car, drive around and check out some of the other parts of the island. While seeing Samos seems like a good idea, we almost hesitated to do it because it’s a day of driving and running around.
Apparently, Patmos has left us easily overwhelmed.
Still, these next few days aren’t as much about our new, interesting island as they are about saying a fond farewell to Greece and transitioning to the road ahead.
Happy Birthday, Dad!
Sent from my iPad
