Miami, Florida, June 22, 2007

Trying to sleep through the night in Voula on the eve of an all-day endurance flight, we were foiled by the heavy traffic on our street. All night long, the cars sped by – some sounding as if they were racing. Oh, and don't forget the motorcycles. We were up by 5:00 to make our 7:20 flight. The drive to the airport was even faster than we had anticipated and we ended up having breakfast in the VIP lounge of the airport, waiting for boarding time.

The so-called business class flight from Athens to Madrid was as uncomfortable coming as it had been going. But when we got to Madrid for our layover we hightailed it straight for the Iberia VIP lounge. We thought to ask if we could change our reservation for the earlier flight, and we were almost successful, but the attendant somehow lost the third seat. So she had to put us back on the original flight. In the intervening 3 minutes, someone had grabbed one of our seats on that flight, and that left us without enough places. We sweated for a minute, and decided to sit in the lounge and let her deal with it.

As we ate pastries and coffee, the attendant came back to us and advised us we were back to our originally scheduled flight. We joked among ourselves how happy it made us simply to be back to the starting point. We settled in for our 4-hour layover, eating smoked salmon, brie, and other delicacies, and drinking wine, espresso, and juices.

Wandering around the lounge, Rosi discovered after 3 hours that there is a darkened room with cots for people to nap. Nuts! If we had only known of this 3 hours ago! Well, now we know for the next time.

Finally, the plane to Miami, with the 2 crying babies and the elderly man who coughed continually, both keeping everyone up and worrying all of us that we might catch some horrible disease. Was it only an hour ago that I calculated it would be 4 more hours in flight? What's the converse of “time flies when you're having fun?”

Well, we arrived at Miami International Airport what seems like 2 days after we got on the plane in Madrid. Made it through passport check in about 2 minutes and we were at the luggage carousel before it even started. Our baggage, checked through from Greece with “priority” tags would be out soon. Or so we thought.

When we were the only ones still waiting, we concluded that there might be a problem. After reporting it to the official, who checked with his baggage department, he advised us that it would be in tomorrow, and that they would deliver it to Cooper City. Annoyed, we breezed through customs and met Rebecca, who came to pick us up. She had thoughtfully driven our van to work that day so that she could pick us up and have room for all the luggage. Oh, well.

After greeting all the pets and a light snack, we were all in bed before 9:00 (4:00 AM, Athens time).