Day 14 - April 25, 2017 (Gladdie)

I was getting tired of eating hotel breakfast food for two weeks. In each hotel, it seemed to be the same thing over and over and over. Waffles, stale or overly sweet croissants, watery oatmeal, expired cereal, and donuts. The donuts were the only things that seemed interesting, so I loaded myself up on sugar as I waited for Jordan to get out of the shower. Hailey was trying to wake up Olivia was Abby getting dressed. Last night had been tiring with all the monasteries and my legs were still sore. I was both happy and sad to get out of Greece. Happy because that meant that I didn't have to walk everywhere, but sad because that meant the end of the vacation. As the five of us took turns to shower, we also packed up our stuff. As soon as we finished the museum, we were heading back to the hotel to grab our luggage so we could get ready for the flight back to Raleigh.
The walk there did a wonderful job repairing everyone's mood. We'd all fallen asleep around midnight that night and going back to familiar territory helped us relax a bit. We'd been in Athens for almost a week and the streets were starting to look familiar. We knew where we were going because the two really responsible people in our group, Hailey and Jordan, now recognized street signs.

Museum of Cycladic Art (History)
 When we finally arrived at the Museum Hailey and Jordan pushed their way to the front of the crowd for the tour and Abby and The Cycladic culture occurred in the Early Bronze Age, from around 3200-2000 BC, in the islands of the Aegean Sea. Most of their figures were female and ranged from complex cultures to simple ones. My favorite place was about Cycladic Society. The museum showed us about the cores of their society, how they spent their time doing leisurely activities, the social hierarchy, and their faiths and beliefs. It wasn't because I was a bookworm, you see, but because they had really interesting ideas. They had a lot of artisans, who were blacksmiths, potters, and sculptors, but no one knows if they actually made a living from that. They exported more things than they imported, which was rare back then, and their life expectancy was around forty. For men. The women lived to about thirty, which meant that, *shudders* most people in our group would die in less than a decade in that society. The museum was built on a collection of ancient artifacts and figurines collected by Nicolas and Dolly Goulandris in the 1960's.

Pan Hotel

We organized the rest of our stuff for the flight back. The five of us all had souvenirs, so now all we had to do was fit all of them in our suitcases. We ended up wasting half an hour doing everything we could to solve the problem. We tried sitting on the suitcases, pleading with them, screaming at them, and then finally giving up because we were running late.

Once again we had to split up in different taxis to get to our destination. I was with Jordan and Olivia in the first taxi, and we were the first ones at the Athens International Airport. After a few minutes, Abby and Hailey joined us. Together, the five of us managed to find our right place. Jordan was the one who asked people where security was. We had to get our luggage checked and we were using a different terminal.

Airport Terminals
We passed the security point easily. Jordan and Hailey had spent most of the morning lecturing us about what types of things we were allowed to bring on the plane. No fresh fruits (as if!) or batteries, or certain liquids. The line was long and we wasted a good forty minutes waiting for our turns.Then we had to find our terminal and gate. Ours was A2 and we found it because it was straight ahead from the security point. We had managed to get on there first and we all squealed in delight when we found out that we were sitting in the same area. I was sitting on a window seat and I was very pleased about that. It seemed that all the passengers were flooding in. By the time the plane was taking off, a good fifteen minutes later, the plane was packed. There were empty seats here and there, but, overall, it was pretty full. Abby and Jordan, the ones at the ends of the seats, were pretty pleased that no one was sitting next to them and that they were allowed to stretch their feet with ease.

Flight (Athens to Raliegh)

I didn't know how everyone else felt, but I was so tired after two weeks of non-stop vacationing. I didn't even had time to take advantage of the tablets attached the seats before I fell asleep. Thankfully, Jordan woke me up for dinner, which consisted of rice and broccoli, and interesting combination. I also got a Coke, which I sipped on while staring outside the window. There was a nice view of the setting sun and I got to see masses of ocean right under us. It was funny, actually. I disliked heights but I didn't feel anything but awe staring outside the window.