Exactly 1 month ago my wife and I embarked on a trip to Greece to celebrate 25 years of being married. Starting today we’d like to turn back the clock and give you day by day details of our trip a month after they occurred.
Day 1
6/1/23 Elgin Illinois
We wake up in our house and the big day we’ve been planning for for years is finally upon us.. We do a final check to make sure we have not forgotten anything and pack our luggage into our car. If you don’t count walking, escalators, elevators or the people movers at the airport we are going on 4 different modes of transportation today. First, we drive to our local bus station and I drop off Amy and our luggage. I then drive home, do a final final check for forgotten items and walk the 1/2 mile back to the bus station. We board the bus and our trip begins in earnest with us shepherding our 1 each checked bag, carry on item and personal item on the way to the penultimate stop of the O’Hare bound Chicago Blue line train.
We know this stop very well as when you take it towards Chicago it connects to the red line train, which has taken us to tens of White Sox games and several Cubs games over the years we have called the Northwest suburbs our home. I have since been there this past 4th of July to attend a White Sox game with my daughter. When we got to the station we were thinking back to the day before Mother’s Day a few weeks prior when while on our way to watch the White Sox take on former home town favorite Jose Aubrey and the Houston Astros we saw a man having a drug overdose and had to call 911 to get him assistance. No such drama ensued this time as we hopped on the Ohare bound train and got out at the airport.
We had built a little what my Dad always called margin into our schedule so we had plenty of time for me to exchange a small amount of dollars to euros before turning in our luggage. This was by far the worst exchange rate I received. It is always a good idea to have some of the local currency at all times of your stay as you can’t always use credit or debit cards. It’s just best to only use airport exchanges when absolutely necessary. It’s ta captive audience thing, the equivalent of buying snacks at a movie theatre. I work at a movie theatre, so I know of what I speak.
At this time of the morning foot traffic at “The World’s Busiest Airport” was fairly light, so we eased right through baggage to Security. We had talked about paying the extra hundred dollars for a third piece of checked baggage but the previous night had discovered that that bag was light enough and small enough to be considered as carry on baggage. So we ended checking only 2 bags. What we forgot to assess was whether the items in that bag were compliment to airline regulations. The shampoo bottles were biggger than allowed so I had to go back to the front and check that bag as well. Something always seems to go askew when you travel, and since we had been planning to pay to transport that piece until the day before the trip it seemed like the small hiccup it was.
I just looked at the time, I have to go the aforementioned movie theatre and inflict 8 dollar popcorn on people. I’m going to have Amy take you to Toronto and beyond, but make sure she mentions the maple leaf cookies.
This is Amy… we landed in Toronto and bought maple leaf cookies because Dave loves them. We hung out for a couple of hours and then boarded the next airplane and flew to Athens. The flight was 9.5 hours and while being a bit squished, we were thrilled to be full-filling a years long dream of visiting Greece. We saved up for 6 years and now it was coming true!
