Day 0: Pre-Trip Thoughts

I am writing this from the Athens airport, having flown in early this morning. I just spent the past two days in London, where I went to my childhood friends Maria and Martin’s wedding at the Design Museum in Kensington. I took an Uber to the airport at 2am to catch a 5:55am flight from Stansted Airport (side note: I truly believe this to be one of the most disorganized airports I’ve ever experienced). As you might imagine, I’m currently running on about 2 hours of sleep and feeling quite tired. I have a pounding headache, but I know I have to keep going for now. In the absence of a good night’s sleep, I’m trying hard to eat enough — Powerade, a premade smoothie, and a tiropita helped marginally. I’m planning to catch a flight to Istanbul tonight so I’ve got several hours to rest up before then — not sure I’m quite so desperate, however, to sprawl out for some sleep on the ground like I’ve seen many people doing.

In any case, if you’re an eagle-eyed reader wondering why I’m in Athens, I’ve intentionally come here first to be able to store my larger suitcase with my iPad and wedding attire, since I don’t want to travel with those in hostels. Since that’s my last stop on this trip, I’ll be able to pick it up at the end when I depart back to the US in two weeks. I had anticipated the process of storing it would be difficult — either hard to find or a lengthy logistical process — but it went so smoothly.

If you know me, you might have guessed that my phone was at 1% at some point — and you would be right in that assumption. Thankfully, I somehow found an open charging port next to an open seat at a café (Hera must be pulling some strings from above to help me make this journey).

I’m so excited for this trip. I have a ton of bucket list items I plan to check off that I’ll share as the days go on, but importantly I will also have a lot of flexibility to meet people in hostels and in the city. My friend Raven encouraged me to be friendly and open enough to meet as many locals as possible and not just other tourists — and I definitely hope to do so.

I cannot believe that, after years of dreaming about this, I am finally about to retrace the steps of Odysseus. As I was told a couple days ago, I also follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, who tried to do a similar journey in the 4th century BC. Like them and Percy Jackson before me (he is real), I hope I find something of myself in all of this.