Trying to Get Home

The final leg of our trip.

Monday, October 11
We checked out of the hotel and caught a train to the airport.  I don’t remember what we paid for train tickets, it was something like 10 euros apiece.

No major problems with the train, although we did almost miss a transfer, only realizing we needed to transfer when they turned the lights out.  Then we looked around and realized we were the only people on the train.  Haha.

We caught the transfer and everything went smooth at the airport.  Our flight to NYC was great and we both got first-class seats next to each other.  This was a nice bonus at the end of the trip and it was something we never expected when flying standby.

Eventually we touched down at JFK and it took forever to get through baggage claim and customs.  At 7:30 pm, our connecting flight to Minneapolis started boarding.

One problem:  There was only one standby seat available.  So close to home!  So sad!  We say our goodbyes and Bird flies home to Minneapolis.  I buy some Burger King, a People magazine and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I find a quiet corner of the airport and settle in to spend the night and wait for the first flight to MSP in the morning.

We had both had taken Tuesday off of work, just in case we didn’ t get out of Athens on Monday.  I didn’t really expect getting out of NY to be the problem.

The rest of the story is boring.  I spent the night reading and sleeping (not really) and caught the first flight home at 8 a.m. with no problems!
It was nice to be home.

Overall Impressions

We loved our vacation!
As I said before, it turned out to be slightly more expensive than I thought it would be, but we still had enough money in the travel fund to cover it.

We learned a few lessons because we made some dumb financial errors and we are still debating whether flying standby was worth the savings.  It’s really a difficult debate because the savings were huge, but it’s hard to put a financial estimate on the stress of flying standby.

Was the hassle worth saving almost a grand?  Yeah, I think so.  Bird’s perspective might be slightly different.

I wonder how much we could have saved by doing more planning (making hotel reservations, securing tickets online, basically having a more detailed itinerary).

There will be a place for vacations like that in the future.  For now, we’re very happy with the way it went and I hope that someday we will make it back to the Greek islands, but man, there are a lot of places in this world we’d like to visit!