We woke up before our alarm thanks to lots of natural light seeping into our very white room. I went for a quick walk around the corner from our place to see the distant rock formations during actual sunlight. After packing up all of our suitcases and loading them into the tiny Chevy Spark, we were on our way to the airport. Twenty minutes later we arrived.
Being a small airport, ticketing, security, and the gate agent were all basically one room (and in some cases the same person). For weight-and-balance purposes, we were asked to take seats in the last row. No worries, there. The ATR-42 does not have any seats that are better than others, and it was a thirty minute flight. We arrived firmly in Athens and were dropped off inside terminal B. This might have been helpful except our next flight was in the other terminal and we had checked our bags.
Our Delta flight was inexplicably delayed two hours. This was somewhat concerning because there was a United flight that would now beat our flight to the east coast by about two hours, but it didn’t have any seats in business class — hence our decision to do Delta. Had we chosen poorly? After being mildly harassed at the gate by the third party security. (They wanted to see our negative covid tests, but as I was pulling mine up on my phone she seemed very perturbed and impatient…I guess she was expecting a paper printout?) Anyway, we sat at the gate in the dark for the next two hours without a single update about the flight’s status.
The crew eventually showed up one by one, equipped with large Duty Free bags. There were some other standbys scattered around the gate area. One of them, who we think had a buddy pass of sorts, went up to the gate to explain that she needed to change her connecting flight. At that time she asked if they had cleared any upgrades and was told that they couldn’t clear any standbys to business due to a weight-and-balance issue. That again…
Eventually boarding commenced. I refreshed my phone to reveal that we were given seats in Comfort+. There are certainly worse seats. And I know this because I refreshed again to find us four rows back in regular economy. The whole reason for choosing this flight was because we were basically guaranteed to get business, and now we were delayed and going to the wrong New York airport in economy seats. Ten minutes after settling into our marginal seats for an 11 hour flight, a flight attendant found us in the back. She explained that we were given first class seats that we could go to after takeoff. Poor Nicole was on an emotional rollercoaster, but it was coasting us into row 3. All the other standbys were brought up to business and it must have been so jarring to the other business class passengers that the flight attendant had to explain that we were assigned these seats and were not just pirates coming to take over. We settled in (again) for the long flight ahead.
It has only been twelve days since we first boarded a flight to Boston to begin our journey to Iceland, Jordan, and Greece. I don’t know if anyone else has ever combined Iceland and Jordan into the same trip, so we may be quite the trailblazers. We wouldn’t normally have planned a trip like this, but that’s the game we have to play in these times. A direct flight from Amman to Athens would have certainly made that travel day seem much shorter. Additionally, planning our last day in Iceland around a covid test in Reykjavik does sort of interrupt one’s rhythm and ability to relax. On the flip side, we saw Petra people-less and generally didn’t have to worry if we would get on flights or not. Royal Jordanian told us it was a full flight, but they told us a lot of things that day, most of them nonsensical. Point being, you have to take the good with the bad.
We arrived in JFK without making up any time in the air. Everyone missed their connecting flights, but this was Bricole’s last stop. We breezed through security to be rewarded with a two hour drive to New Jersey in heavy traffic. Alas, for the first time since the Courtyard in Reykjavik, we were able to do laundry.
passports & pepto bismol 