AspiringNomad

It’s been 10 whole hours since I woke in sheer panic as I realised I had over slept my alarm. I think the adrenaline is still racing through my veins and I am unsure as to whether I will ever be able to peacefully fall back to sleep again. It has not been the nice relaxing start to my second solo trip as I had hoped.

As my alarm rang at 1am I laid there wondering if I needed to have something to eat before leaving to get to the airport for 4am. As these thoughts swam around my brain I accidentally drifted back to sleep and didn’t wake again until 4:30am! With absolutely no chance of getting to the airport in time, I threw my clothes on and thought it was worth a try anyway! (That’s the traditional McDonald’s stop out the window!) My ETA was 6:22am, the flight was at 6:00am. Somehow, I still hoped there might be chance I could get on that flight. Silence in the car as I raced for my flight, I was sure that no other car on the road had a journey more important than mine. I’ll expect a few speeding tickets when I get home but at the time, getting to Athens seemed much more important. Upon arrival, I pounded on the first Jet2 employee I saw and asked if it was still possible for me to get on that flight. With pity in his eyes, he simply said no and directed me to the help desk. It was hopeless, and I had to finally admit to myself that I had let the worst case scenario happen, I had missed my flight.

Determined to get to Athens, I booked a different flight through Ryanair, the only one that was going from Stansted directly to Athens today. Unfortunately, the flight was at 15:45, so I was going to have a while to wait. Once booked, I sat outside, crouched on a little curb with my head in my hands not sure whether to laugh or cry. I probably looked like I was having a breakdown, honestly I wasn’t far off! Once I had calmed down, I headed to the toilet and realised that I had left the house in such a hurry I quite literally had my knickers in a twist and my underwear was on back to front! This made giggle and just like that I decided to embrace the fact that I had 8/9hours to wait at Stansted before my flight and headed through to security and into the main terminal.

I have now been at the airport for a total of 8.5hrs. I’m sat in a designated ‘quiet‘ seating area and thought it might be therapeutic to jot down the trials and tribulations of todays events in what seems to have become the first entry to my blog for my Athens trip ‘23. Although I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, nor would I recommend it to anyone, my time here hasn’t been too awful. I have had a good wander round the shops, I’ve watched my new favourite series on Netflix, I’ve eaten and had about 5mins of sleep but really, it has gone quite quickly.

It’s 01:08am, I am laying down in my cool air bnb and I find myself thinking about how lucky I am (as I usually do whenever I am anywhere other than the UK). After eventually taking off from Stansted (which at one point I thought might never happen), I only had about 3hrs of boredom before looking out of the window and seeing Athens lit up from above. What a beautiful city it is from the sky! I felt like I was in a movie as we headed down to land.

I struck up conversation with the guy next to me as we were waiting to leave the plane and he gave me some really helpful advice about getting a taxi. It made my life a lot easier and before I knew it I was in my ‘Freenow’ taxi with another really nice man who was also more than happy to give me lots of useful tips for my time here. A few key boxes, a new stamp in my passport and one very dodgy apartment lift later I arrived at ‘Park View’, my air bnb apartment. So exhausted and so happy with the place, I stepped out onto the balcony to admire the view at night and was overwhelmed with emotion. I may have missed that flight this morning, but I have finally got myself here despite it all and I couldn’t be happier! Now for a good night sleep before my first day here tomorrow!