Oh the sweet sorrow of saying goodbye.  And sorrow it is.  We have so thoroughly enjoyed these 40 days on this ship.  Have there been glitzes?  Yes.  But, in the end – the staff and crew make up for all the little inconsistencies and bumps in the road.  We’ve said goodbye to all our pals – Mark last night with his goodie bag, Willi, who opens the door to the gym for us every morning, with his goodie bag, Mr. Coffee (who sadly we do not know his name) with his goodie bag, because he was there with us every morning when we had our coffee and he was preparing the cups and accoutrements for the coffee and tea station (and never smiled until we gave him some candy – then he was our best buddy and even chastised us one morning because we were late and not there waiting for him when he arrived!  LOL).  Gede with his treats and tip last night – who then came back after service to thank us personally.  Sigh.  We are so sad – and just hope and pray this same crew will be aboard in March when we return to the Quest for our South America odyssey.

We delay our departure as much as possible since we have a taxi booked for 9:30.  Eventually we have to leave our cabin and head up to the buffet for our last breakfast.   Rachel, the adorable always happy, always talking, assistant waiter came up from behind and hugged us both, then took selfies with us and Royce – one of her trouble making cohorts! – photobombing in the background.  We’re gonna miss these guys!

Off the ship, we wait for our taxi who arrives right on time, then scares the crap out of me on the drive to the airport.  Achmed he ain’t!  Let me tell you!  Ed is busy on his phone, so he never sees anything – but I’m thankful we make it out of the car and into the airport alive!

We have an inordinate amount of time before our flight – 6 hours!  But there really isn’t much else to do – we sure weren’t going into Athens to wander around before the flight – so we’re here and we have lounges.  We’ve splurged on business class for this big 50 minute flight – woo hoo!  It means extra baggage and lounge access.  And check in right away – which is always a concern in European airports.  Heading to our first lounge – we decide to hit the Priority lounge for our first 3 hours, then hit the Aegean Business lounge.  This works out perfectly as we have breakfast foods in the Priority lounge, plus plugs for the computer and phones.  Then we move to the Aegean lounge where they have better food and self service beer and wine as well as plugs!  Bonus all around. 

Flight time arrives and we head down to the jam packed gate area.  It is a bus ride to the plane and people are milling about the gate area, queuing up without even understanding where the queue is – or what group they should be in.  Being Business, we board first of course and manage to snag seats on the bus. That’s a first!  Before you know it, we are safely strapped into to our Business class seats – which on this particular plane ends up being normal 3 seats on each side, but with the middle seat empty and used as a permanent tray table.  Nice.  We’re spreading out.

Good thing we’ve got room, because suddenly the boarding has stopped.  Why you ask? Well the Captain comes on to inform us that the boarding had to be stopped because 2 of our flight crew members are “unfit” to fly.  Um, what?  What does that even mean????? The Captain says a  25 minute delay…… okie dokie. Well, no matter to us, we have no real deadline in Kos, just going to the hotel and dinner.  So we don’t care.  And to answer your questions, no we were not served any drinks but water!

Thankfully, this is Athens and there are obviously a slew of standby attendants because sure enough, in about 25 minutes here come 2 more to work the flight.  Finally, 1 1/2 hours late, we eventually push back.  The flight itself is sweet and short – with gorgeous scenery flying across the Greek mainland peninsula and then over the islands that dot the Mediterranean. 

In between all the window gazing we are served a very good little meal of excellent sesame chicken slices on bread with grilled cheese and lettuce and a tomato.  Great little snack to tide us over.  And we do get beer and wine – and this amazingly awesome chocolate bar thing that Ed eats and loves.  I saved mine for some midday sugar high when I need it most!

More window gazing – I mean, how can you ever get enough of this view? – and also a free roundtrip ticket giveaway to celebrate Aegean’s 24^th anniversary.  How sweet! We don’t win, but what a nice gesture.  We do get a bonus of 240 extra Frequent flyer points, which will go to our United account as a code share.  Very nice!

And then we are on the ground, grabbing our bags which come out first (amazing!) and into a cab in no time for the 9 minute ride to the hotel that costs 17 Euros.  Really?  That seems a bit much. But, whatever, we are here.

Unfortunately the hotel is not expecting us just quite yet. It seems that when the booking came across to them, they thought it was 4 AM not 4 PM.  So they are going to have someone sit up over night to check us in.  No – really?  First of all, that would have been 4 AM this morning – so we would have already been here.  Secondly, nah, we think they are just making excuses because the room isn’t done!  And it isn’t, and won’t be for 30 minutes or so.  Ok fine, we’ll just go to dinner now.  It’s 7:15, it’s time for food.

But the restaurant we want to go to is packed with no available tables.  Dang! The gal there tells us she’ll have something in 45 minutes, so we figure, what the heck and head back to the hotel bar to have a beer and wine.  That worked well and when we walk back to the restaurant, there is a table waiting for us.  And a feast!  Tzatziki and pita, shrimp saganaki, cheese saganaki (the best we’ve ever had!) and grilled octopus for Ed -of which I shared a bite and the fries!  Excellent meal – so good in fact we made a booking for when we return next Friday.  This place is crazy busy now – and we don’t want to ensure we have a place waiting for us on a Friday night!

Then back to the hotel, where the gal gives us a little bit of grief because the room was ready an hour ago!  Um yeah, well, we had to eat!  But, once we are settled, the room is fabulous, the balcony excellent and we spend the rest of the night out there with our night cap drinks.  Tomorrow – Patmos!