{"id":2770,"date":"2011-10-18T08:33:18","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T08:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2770"},"modified":"2012-04-26T11:21:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T11:21:09","slug":"52-hours-without-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2770","title":{"rendered":"52 Hours Without Sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Helen and Vivienne<\/p><\/div>\n

0530 hours 13 October 2011 NZ time … too late to worry further on issues concerning work, time to rise and make ready for yet another journey to Greece.\u00a0 Johanna and Ewart in the Unit below me\u00a0(I sold them the property recently … you could say I picked my new neighbours and what a great choice I made) together with family, will take care and keep watch of home whilst I am away.\u00a0 Enjoyed a coffee at The Yellow House with mother, Dave and Kayla before heading out to Wanganui Airport … my dear sister Janet pulling up beside us, having just\u00a0arrived from Taupo.\u00a0 Next surprise … thick cloud would prevent our flight departure from Wanganui – the alternative being an hour’s\u00a0bus ride to Palmerston North where we boarded our ”pencil” plane for the flight to Auckland.\u00a0 The worst aspect of that particular part of my journey –\u00a0a young girl sitting close by,\u00a0sobbing hysterically the entire way, I cannot imagine what could have been so upsetting.<\/p>\n

Arrival in Auckland an hour behind schedule but still plenty of time to once again meet with my long standing friend Vivienne to catch up and share a bottle of wine.\u00a0 Farewelled and time to move on to board my Emirates flight on a B777-300ER\u00a0– window seat, 2nd row in Economy, not bad!\u00a0 Soon dinner would be served – I was rather hungry and so really enjoyed my meal.\u00a0 After commencing our descent into Brisbane\u00a0came the announcement “20 minute delay due to a thunderstorm in the area”.\u00a0 Arrival\u00a01830 hours local time, temperature 23 degrees C.\u00a0<\/p>\n

12 hours after arriving at Wanganui Airport, we were still sitting on the tarmac at Brisbane Airport.\u00a0 At last, take off for the long flight to Dubai some 12,000 kilometres away!\u00a0 Yet another dinner to be served, snacks throughout the long night then breakfast and finally touchdown in Dubai where the temperature was 30 degrees C.\u00a0 Approximately 6 hours later, departure from Dubai on the daily\u00a0flight to Athens with\u00a0interestingly, the passengers being predominently\u00a0Asians.\u00a0 Perhaps they are better off financially than the rest of the world in this time of global crisis.\u00a0\u00a0Somehow it felt satisfying being able to identify some of the Greek islands as we flew over in mainly clear, blue skies – touchdown in Athens 1400 hours local time on Friday 14 October.\u00a0 I was extremely happy to be back once again in Ellada.<\/p>\n

More time to wait before making the final leg of my journey to Hania, Kriti.\u00a0 Athens Airport appeared to be extra busy and so I allowed plenty of time to make my way slowly downstairs to pass through the security checks and on to departure Gate B31.\u00a0 In Dubai, among other duty free goods, I had purchased a 200ml bottle of Paco Rabane for Costas.\u00a0 I never gave it another thought until security pounced on it, applying the 100ml rule and telling me I could\u00a0not keep it.\u00a0 Still sealed and with receipt meant nothing … they seemed hell bent on taking it\u00a0from me.\u00a0 There was only one action for me to take – a race back upstairs to check in where I wrapped the package in my black coat, stuffed it into my carry on bag and checked it in, followed by a race back, again through security check and on to the departure Gate.<\/p>\n

Feeling more exhausted by the minute, then came the announcement … due to an Air Traffic Controllers strike, our flight was delayed, finally arriving in Hania 2 hours late!\u00a0 As things tend to unfold in Greece, it was not without surprise that I learnt the last bus into the Centre had already gone, no thought given to waiting for the late arrival of our flight.\u00a0 Had to take a taxi instead at a cost of 23 Euro.\u00a0 With my friend Antonia out babysitting, she had left me a key – a key and a large metal door which I knew had beaten me in the past and yes, you guessed right.\u00a0 Fatigued to the max, I had no luck with opening the door, waiting until 2315 hours for Antonia to arrive home and let me in.<\/p>\n

Finally, 52 hours\u00a0after getting up in Wanganui, I had reached my destination – for now, anyway.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The trials and tribulations of travel!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

0530 hours 13 October 2011 NZ time … too late to worry further on issues concerning work, time to rise and make ready for yet another journey to Greece.\u00a0 Johanna and Ewart in the Unit below me\u00a0(I sold them the property recently … you could say I picked my new neighbours and what a great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2770"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3188,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions\/3188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}