Saturday morning we woke up ready to enjoy our final hours of vacation. We had another wonderful breakfast at 9:30 and then went to do what we couldn’t leave Greece without doing. That would be riding donkeys. I was sort of nervous about riding the donkey after my horseback riding experience. I was thinking about not even riding one but there was no way the girls were going to let me sit out. In the end I’m glad they made me. The owners took us around Hydra on the donkeys and we got to see parts of the island that we hadn’t seen. I even managed to enjoy it and not freak out the entire time!
After we got off the donkeys Jeana and I headed to a nice quite spot to enjoy the views one last time. Once we had a nice time relaxing we went and did our last minute souvenir shopping. Then it was sadly time to begin our departure back “home.” We headed back to our hotel to grab our suitcase and begin our adventure home. We were really stressed about getting home because we had had so many problems with traveling in the past. We left our hotel prepared for the worst.
Our first bump in the road occurred when our ferry showed up about 15 minutes late. A ferry came at the correct departing time but it was just a teaser as they told us ours was on its way. The ferry ride was set to last about two hours which would give us three hours once we got back to Athens to get to the airport and go through security and whatnot. Our bus once we got back to Athens was supposed to take an hour. We had planned just enough time for it all to work out and that’s what made us nervous. All the other times we traveled we had given ourselves extra time and had used it. This time we didn’t have any room to spare.
Somehow besides our ferry delay everything went beyond perfectly. Our ferry get us to Athens fifteen minutes behind schedule but we found our bus stop right away and purchasing our tickets was really easy. Then our bus showed up fifteen minutes early! Such a big relief…our worries were quickly disappearing. From past experience we knew something was bound to come up though! Somehow our bus managed to get us to the airport in 45 minutes. It was supposed to take an hour and a half!!!!! We were beyond ecstatic. We had gotten to the airport with no problems and actually had time to spare. Checking in and going through security was a piece of cake. We got through to our gate and had over an hour to spare. We sat and soaked in the great feeling of being at the airport on time safe and sound. Our flight was boarded early and actually took off early because we were all set to go.
We had a great flight. It was four hours long so we got dinner and they played a movie. It was actually Eclipse so it made the time pass really quickly which was nice. Normally when you are headed home it feels like it takes forever because you are so antsy to actually get there. Our flight arrived at Heathrow about twenty minutes ahead of schedule!! It was just another great surprise for a nice and easy day of traveling. I told Jeana I thought it was the travel Gods being nice to us after running into so many other travel problems. It is their way of getting us to continue to travel!
All we had to do to get home from the airport was jump on the tube. Being on our tube was so nice because it was what we knew. We didn’t have to think about anything. The tube ride was a long one but we finally changed over to our good old Bakerloo line and were minutes away from our final destination. We had the best surprise on our tube ride though…we actually ended up on the same tube as Ashlin and Brandon who were headed home from their trip to Italy! Again, such a small world! We had a great little reunion with only more to come when we finally made it back to our flat!
Once we got back to our flat everyone was beginning to roll in from their vacations so we all began sharing stories. I got to skype with my family which was really nice after not talking to them for almost ten days! We all ended up staying up pretty late because we were just all so happy to be back together in one place. Everyone here really has become like a second family so being apart for so long was a new experience. Made all being back together all the sweeter!
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