Today’s post is by our good “friend afar,” Melissa! She’s my oldest sister and along with my niece met my husband and I in Greece in May. The flight to meet up with us in Athens didn’t quite go as planned so she shares her story of making the best of interrupted travel.

Ninety-nine percent of the time that I’ve traveled, travel plans work the way they are supposed to. That is saying a lot for two multi-week trips to Europe that both involved multiple flights and trains to connect between cities. However, eventually something is going to go awry the more you travel. You can either let it ruin your trip and be miserable or enjoy the experiences that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. We have talked about these experiences since our trip more than those that were planned.

To maximize our time in Greece, the well laid plan was to arrive in Athens in the morning, meet up with our travel companions, then take the ferry from Piraeus to Hydra to stay for a couple of nights before exploring Athens. The only direct connection to arrive in Athens in the morning is via JFK and when bad weather and a closed runway there caused our delay out of Atlanta, we missed our connection, and were switched to the flight through Frankfurt. Due to the delay we arrived in Germany when we were supposed to be arriving in Athens! Instead we had a four hour layover and then another four hour flight. Since we were only spending four days in Greece before continuing our travel to the UK we were both discouraged especially since our delayed arrival in Greece would be after the last island ferry and we would be staying the night in Athens rather than on the island.

After eating a good German breakfast and enjoying strong coffee and letting our travel companions know of our delay, my 20-year old daughter was ready get some sleep in the chair at the airport, which gave me time to use the airport’s wifi to rebook travel plans. I’m the travel planner in the family but my sister had researched and booked most of the Greece portion of this trip. I also have not traveled alone nor with just one of my children to unfamiliar places so I knew I needed to come through for us since the two of us would be spending the night alone. We wanted to stay near the port and take the first ferry the following day. I quickly began to wonder what travelers did about interrupted plans before the internet as I settled in to research some options! Not yet an avid user of Trip Advisor (I’m a top contributor now because it has been so helpful) I started by googling hotels near the Port of Piraeus and stumbled on a blog listing several. I didn’t want to spend much since I thought I would already be paying for a night on the Hydra I wouldn’t be using (they didn’t end up charging us) and having to rebuy ferry tickets (you are only able to cancel in person at the port before the scheduled departure…difficult when you are in another country). I found that Hotel Argo Anita got good reviews and was listed for a reasonable price. I ended up booking it through Booking.com which I also had not used before. This was great because I could book the room but it didn’t ask for a credit card so I could avoid another wasted night (just in case).

Once finally arriving in Greece….sitting alone at the baggage claim carousal…. and finally wandering to the lost baggage counter our adventure can finally begin….

We had already planned to take the bus to the port anyway and meet our party there so I was pretty set on that part. The guy who sat behind us on the bus happened to be the same one I had inquired with about how to purchase a bus ticket. I asked him how I would know where I should get off at the port and he said he wasn’t going that far but that we should move to the front and ask the bus driver to tell us where to get off when we got to Piraeus. I discovered this would be invaluable for the remainder of my trip because unlike the subway, there is no way to know where you are or where you should get off and everyone just seems to know.

I had written some vague directions I found on the hotel website about where they were located once we arrived at the port but thankfully Hotel Argo Anita wanted to be  found as they had attached yellow and black printed signed with Hotel Argo Anita and an arrow to many of the local street signs. After twisting through several blocks that seemed a little deserted and seeing several stray cats picking through trash we found our much desired destination (a bed) and were relieved to find it more welcoming than the surrounding area.

The owners were very accommodating and quickly located the booking I’d made online while I inquired about securing a reservation on the 8am ferry. They rapidly had the company bring the ferry tickets to us and rather than take a taxi to the port in the morning they suggested we use their transportation which was free which you purchased breakfast. I reserved it figuring it would be the same or cheaper than a taxi anyway. Not wanting to venture back into the surrounding neighborhood in the dark, we ate dinner in their little restaurant which consisted of a wavy potato chip appetizer , our first Greek salad in Greece, pizza (served with bread?), and my new favorite Mythos beer. It was a wonderful way to end a very long travel day.

We were able to start the next morning with wonderful Greek yogurt, be transported to the ferry by a cute Grecian grandfatherly looking gentleman, and were finally on our way to our island destination, Hydra. What could have been a miserable experience and a wasted vacation day in one of the most beautiful places in the world turned out to be a memorable experience that neither of us will soon forget.best

[This is not a sponsored post. I just wanted to share the places and websites that helped us out during our interrupted travel!]