And Then We Were Home

  When we last talked Penny and I were chillin' in Volos, hanging out on the beach with umbrella drinks being constantly replenished by our faithful bartender, Linus. Ok, maybe I was wishing that was the case because it wasn't terribly warm and no one puts an umbrella in your ouzo but, hell, it would have been nice if we could have been doing that.

  We did end up spending three relaxing days there, ate at some decent restaurants which didn't pile french fries on our plates and wandered the streets checking out all the shops that seemed eternally closed. To be fair, we were there from Saturday afternoon through Tuesday morning and Greece seems to operate from Tuesday to Saturday morning. The rest of the time everyone sits in a coffee shop, of which there appear to be thousands in every town, and drinks... coffee. Or, if they're male, they spend their time arguing with each other at raised volume in a contest where the one who talks loudest and longest wins. Reminds me of home when I was a kid... but I digress.

  I was going somewhere with this and it's this: we were there three days and never touched the car. I'd found a parking spot on the street outside our lodgings and there it stayed until we left. Great. Except for the parking ticket. No idea what was wrong with where I parked. There was a spot painted on the road. There were no diagonal lines drawn through it. It wasn't too close to the corner. Who knows what was wrong but I got a ticket. I assume it was a parking ticket since it was all in Greek and, yeah, I can't read Greek. Well, I know what Greek for "taverna" looks like and I figured out what "emergency" was when we passed a hospital but, after that, I got nothin'. I even tried using Google Translate but the print quality was poor (carbon paper anyone?) and there was a lot of scrawled handwriting on it. I figured Budget could handle it and add it to our bill when we returned the car.

  The morning we left there were cars parked close to both front and rear bumpers but I managed to squeeze out and we headed off to Athens for our Wednesday morning flight. Two hundred kilometers later, while parked at a roadside rest area I noticed there were no number plates on the car. Someone stole them! I mean, they were there when we got into the car, right? They were, right? Well, truth be told, neither of us noticed because there were cars parked close to front and back bumpers. Anyway, we noticed now. What to do? The decision was made that Budget would handle that, too, when we returned the car, which we did the following morning.

  The first thing the rental guy says when he looks at the car is, "Where are the number plates?" I shrug in a Gallic sort of way that says, "Who knows, mon ami?" All I was missing was the beret and a Gitanes on my lip. I hand him, what I assume is, the ticket, asking if this helps. He takes a gander at it, scowls, mutters to himself and says, "The police took them." Ok. I was prepared for marauding number plate thieves who hang out at roadside rest areas looking to filch plates from unsuspecting motorists relieving themselves in the facilities but the police? Really? Apparently, he explained, the Volos PD takes your plates if you don't pay a parking ticket within twenty-four hours of issuance. That's how they make sure you pay. Except us. We didn't pay, now did we? Did anyone notice we had no plates? We drove through a five km detour complete with five sets of police officers directing traffic and none of them stopped us. That's some kind of deterrence they've got going on there.

  Anyway, the Budget folks promised to take care of the whole thing, no charge. I figure they'll get on the phone to the Volos PD and give them an earful for doing this to a tourist's plainly labeled rental car knowing full well they'll have no idea what happened because, wait for it, they can't read Greek. Problem solved and off we went to find a plane to take us home.

  Before we go further, it's important to know a) we were flying home via Frankfurt, Germany and b) there had been a strike by airport staff in Frankfurt the previous day. We were supposed to take off at 1400 and make a ninety minute connection to Canada. Trouble was, the plane we awaited to take us to Frankfurt was an hour late and we didn't arrive until fifteen minutes before the connection. As well, Lufthansa pulled in at gate A42 and Air Canada was leaving from B43. The two gates are approximately seventeen miles apart. I might be exaggerating a smidge. Also, as if the distance wasn't enough, there was a customs stop before we could enter the "B" concourse. Only two agents were on duty and both were in heated exchanges with people, one of whom was trying to get into Germany with a passport that expired in 2019! Where do they find these people? It took almost twenty minutes before we cleared customs and arrived at a deserted gate B43, out of both breath and patience.

  We wandered around for another thirty minutes before we found the Lufthansa Transfer Desk and they arranged for us to fly the next day on Icelandair via Reykjavik, providing vouchers for a room and meals. It's worth noting the dinner voucher was for the buffet. That sounded promising. I was starving and "buffet" is a French word that translates to "eat until you puke". We took the shuttle bus to the hotel, dropped our non-existent bags in the room, and headed off to stuff our faces.

  The buffet was, in a word, disappointing. Mysterious foods that smelled like cheese. Quasi-Asian things that were soggy and bland. There was a sign on the coffee machine that told us not to touch it. It's for breakfast only. We ate what we could without gagging and headed off to our three twin bed-equipped room to sleep off a wonderful day.

  This would be a good time to revisit a comment I made when we were back in Cyprus, when I was looking for a T-shirt or sweatshirt of socks that showed I'd been in the country. I believe I said I'd been to fourteen countries. Well, Penny and I had a discussion about that because I said the number was actually higher when you include the countries where I've changed planes. My argument was, if I touch the ground, I'm in the country. Think Pope John Paul II climbing down the airstairs and kissing the tarmac.

  Like that. If you include those countries the number is actually twenty. Add Germany makes twenty-one. No arguing. We were in a hotel in Frankfurt outside the airport property. It absolutely counts!

  Thursday saw a much better buffet for breakfast, including the aforementioned coffee machine, an uneventful flight to Iceland and a quick change to the homecoming leg, except we had to take a bus to the plane and I'm pretty sure the driver didn't know where they parked it. He wandered around the tarmac, driving us, literally, around the entire airport until arriving at our poor, lonely plane in the back forty. It was a bit like parking at the shopping mall and wondering where you left the car when you come out. It was a 737 Max 8 and I think they were keeping it away from the other planes so they didn't catch whatever it had.

  Interesting tidbit. In Iceland they don't let you skateboard aboard the bus:

  I thought maybe they were concerned about kids hitching a ride off the rear bumper a la Marty McFly except we were at the airport! I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone skateboarding at the airport. Well, once they've seen that sign I'm sure no one will try it now. Anyway, the flight home was as uneventful as the first leg of the trip and, bonus, we crossed Greenland under a cloudless sky.

  We arrived home to a find all the kids with one kind of sickness or another, happy to see them all just the same.

  This was our first overseas house sit. It was interesting and exotic and fun, mostly. We went to places where no one goes, saw things no one sees and did things no one does. When we're old and gray we'll tell our grandchildren about the time we tried to break into the UK radar base atop Mount Olympus and caused a general alarm attracting all the UN peacekeepers within fifty kilometers. Ok. We told our grandchildren that when we got home and none of them believed it. None of you believed it either but I'll bet it made you snicker, just a bit.

  We've now been home a few days and our next trip is just around the corner. We'll be motoring down to coastal Virginia, a place called Hardyville (look it up). The house is right on the water and they have a dock and kayaks so this promises to be one of our better house sits. There's a decent golf course fifteen minutes away and some passable restaurants within a short drive. It's not close enough to Washington to spend any time there but we're scheduled to do another house sit in Baltimore for a week after this sit so we can do that in May.

  When we return home after Baltimore it will have been almost a year since we started this adventure. We'll stay home for the summer before heading to points unknown in October but I'm planning on writing a "best of" episode covering all the fun times and interesting things we saw and did during our first year on the road.

  Until then I'll keep posting our experiences for all you faithful readers.