A common refrain this month has been, "Travel days are tough." Ferries, planes, trains, cars, it doesn't matter. It's hard to move two kids across the world or across the room. And constantly reminding ourselves that has helped us keep our sanity at several points along this trip.
There are travel days, and there are Travel Days. Today was a TRAVEL DAY. The next 24 hours would include taxis, trains, brief hotel stays, and of course, another trans-Atlantic plane ride. We can do this. We can do this.
But first, breakfast. Our last morning on Sifnos was one for the books. Mimi woke up pretty early, but I wanted to at least let Aimee and Quinn keep sleeping. So I took Mimi for a walk around our neighborhood. We didn't have any particular destination in mind, so we followed the sound of a rooster crowing to see where it would lead us. We ended up in a little backyard farm with pomegranate and olive trees, roosters, rabbits, goats, and of course chickens. This place really is paradise.
As a matter of fact, Grael's dad, a professional travel writer, considers Greece to be his favorite destination on the planet. And he's seen it all.
On our way back, Mimi grabbed a bundle of grapes from a vine hanging in front of the restaurant next to our hotel, completely unaware that this is not normal. Most people don't get to eat fresh grapes while watching the sun come up over the Aegean Sea, and she will remember none of this.
When the rest of the gang woke up, we walked over to the cafe next door for our last bowl of fresh yogurt and honey. Even mixed with a few tears, it's still the best breakfast on the planet.
After several rounds of goodbyes, it was time to get in our taxi back to the port. Like everything on this island, the taxi situation is unbearably charming. There are ten taxis on the entire island. Not ten taxi companies, ten individual people with a number on the side of their car. Their cell phone numbers are plastered all over the island, and you work your way through the list until you find one that can pick you up. Nicos isn't picking up? Try Marcos. Marcos is having lunch? Give Nina a call.
The limited number of taxis generally isn't a problem, since the island is so small. But on ferry mornings, half the island is either coming or going. We had a hard time finding anyone that was available to come all the way to our little corner of the island, but we finally secured a ride with our tenth phone call, not that getting stuck here would have been the worst thing.
[Side note: Nona, Grael, and Conrad actually did get stuck in Sifnos. A big storm shut down all ferry traffic to the island a few days after we left. Our friends "had" to stay on the island three days longer than planned, and just barely made it to their flight home. The had been planning on spending a couple of days in Athens before flying home, but it looks like the Acropolis will have to wait, yet again.]
But the weather wasn't a problem for us. Cloudless skies and crisp blue water followed us all the way to the port, and we didn't have a great answer for why we were leaving this island.
It's hard to take a decent photo from the back seat of a moving taxi, but this was our view on the way out of town.
Looking out at the Aegean, it's easy to see how how a foundational human civilization was born here. There's so much raw, emotional power that comes from seeing nothing but the sea in all directions. It makes you want to be part of something bigger than yourself. It also makes you never want to go home.
But our vacation wasn't quite over yet. The only time we could arrange a taxi was at 10 am, and our ferry didn't leave until 1 pm. So we got to the port town with plenty of time to eat yet more amazing food and watch a couple other ferries come and go.
After a casual lunch (and three gyros for the road), we successfully carried out our last ferry on-boarding without leaving any children or luggage behind. No small task.
The voyage to Athens was relatively easy. The weather was nice, the espresso bar was open, and Mimi was napping. Perfect conditions.
Nicos, our taxi driver from two weeks prior, was at the port waiting for us as promised. With a two year old on my shoulders and a rolling suitcase that no longer rolled, I couldn't have been happier to see him. He helped with our bags and whisked us away from the busting cacophony of a very busy port.
Once we cleared the port, Nicos asked me which hotel we were going to. I gave him the name of the one I had booked online. And as soon as Nicos turned to me, I knew where we were going.
"Oh, really? You're staying there?" He said, "No, no that's not a good hotel."
Crap. I immediately realized that I had booked us into a hotel in the not-so-great neighborhood we had accidentally wandered into earlier in the trip.
"Really, Nicos? No good?"
"Well, the hotel is fine, but the neighborhood is bad. Just watch your bags and don't walk around at night."
We called a few other hotels as we made our way downtown, but even with Nicos' connections, we couldn't find an alternative. It was a Saturday night, and Athens was at capacity. Looks like we would be holing up in our hotel room for the night.
The security guard out front (first clue) helped us bring our bags in, and the check in process was a breeze. Like Nicos said, the hotel really was nice. Looking around the lobby, the hotel catered to two groups of people: online shoppers that didn't know any better, and people that just needed a place to stay before they flew out the next day. We were both. But I was really glad that we had spent the majority of our time in Athens at Dimitris' apartment.
That evening, both the desk clerk and the restaurant waiter commented on how good my Greek was. That must be how they pad their online reviews.
My Greek is terrible, by the way. But by that point in the trip, I had learned to predict the question flow. They could have asked me my blood type, and I would have replied, "Thank you. He's two months old, she's two years old, and we're from the United States."
Thankfully, the hotel restaurant was totally adequate, and we had a decent meal while Mimi watched her first soccer match on the TV at the bar. There are worse ways to spend a night locked inside of your hotel.
Our room was the typical European capital city hotel room, in that you could reach from the porch to the toilet if you laid on your bed a certain way. Not ideal when traveling with two small children, but with a super early flight the next morning, it really didn't matter. Exacerbating our sleeplessness, the hotel didn't have a crib. We brought a tiny pack and play for Quinn, but this was a terrible night to teach Mimi how to sleep on a real bed for the first time. We tried putting the mattress on the floor, reading books, singing songs, you name it. But without fail, she would be up walking the room within three seconds of me crawling into bed. Every time.
After a couple hours of trying to get Mimi to go to sleep (complicated by her losing her mind in an overtired stupor because she couldn't figure out how to breastfeed a stuffed doll), I was able to get her to fall asleep by laying a sheet on the floor and making a bed for the two of us right on the ground. I can no longer feel either of my feet, but getting whatever sleep we got was worth it.
As promised, Nicos was waiting for us at 4 am outside of our hotel. He asked how our hotel stay was, and I told him what he already knew. The room was decent, and we saw nothing else. We continued with as much taxi small talk as I was able to muster uncaffeinated at 4 am. Nicos told me that he had been working all night, and this was his 25th hour of driving. That perked me up quite nicely as I now watched his eyelids like a hawk. There was one questionable low-speed swerve that quickened my pulse a bit, but we made it safely along the freeway. If the swerve was a ploy to get me to tip well once we arrived, it worked. I was thrilled to have my family on solid ground.
The only (and I mean only) benefit of a sleep-deprived toddler is that she was too tired to run off at the airport. So we had a few peaceful minutes to work out the inevitable check in issues that come along with flying with two children. Quinn was the only one of us that was fully ticketed all the way home. I'd have to talk with our airline in Houston to get the rest of us home. The ticket agent apologized profusely, but Houston was close enough. I could figure it out from there.
And just like that, we were back on an international tarmac with a sleep deprived toddler. We're doing it.
Don't worry, we didn't forget Quinn. But we felt pretty irresponsible leaving the herd of passengers to take a picture on the tarmac. There was no time to set up a decent shot. But the picture does capture Mimi's emotional state accurately. Sort of an adorable zombie.
Aimee and I vowed to remind ourselves how nice the trip was in about 5 hours when the inevitable breakdown would come.
Our first flight from Athens to Frankfurt was relatively easy. I kept Mimi busy while consuming as much coffee as the flight attendants would give me. Aimee tended to Quinn's bodily functions while doing the same.
I tried with everything I had to get Mimi to fall asleep on the plane. I wanted her to get enough sleep to keep it together on the next flight. And, possibly just to taunt me, Mimi finally fell asleep literally as the wheels touched down in Frankfurt. But I was just happy she was sleeping.
As an aside, traveling with a toddler (and life with a toddler for that matter) is all about the present moment. Survival. Back when I traveled without kids, I had all my flight number written down, knew the layout of each airport, and looked up each airline's phone number. Now I'm just happy to get all four of us to the airport. I had a vague memory of our flight details, but nowhere near what I would have liked. Specifically, I had absolutely no idea how tight our connection in Frankfurt would be. As our plane touched down, I looked at our Frankfurt to Houston boarding passes and tapped my watch. That can't be right. What's the time difference in Germany? Not as much as I would have liked. We had about 45 minutes to gather our stuff, disembark, clear EU Passport Control, change terminals, and get on our plane. Oh, and did I mention that Mimi was still out cold?
Not one to tempt fate, I didn't want to risk waking Mimi up. I put on my backpack, helped Aimee with her bag, and carried Mimi--carseat and all--as we ran through the Frankfurt airport. Our first stop was an airline employee that was directing everyone to their connecting flights. She asked me which flight we were on. "Lufthansa 440 to Houston" I told her.
"Oh. Hmm. Nope. No, you're not going to make it." She said while looking at her tablet. "Well...hmm. No. Not going to make it. Well...maybe, actually. Looks like there was a delay. Just hurry."
Not needing to hear that again, Aimee and I continued our sprint through the airport, one sleeping kid bouncing along with each of us.
Next stop: Enhanced security. Post 9/11, passengers on international flights to the US have to go through an extra round of security. It's the same procedure as the non-enhanced regular security we went through in Athens (metal detectors, xrays, etc.) but this time, certain travelers were selected for additional security screening. And guess who got picked? The sweating, panting 6' 5" guy that hasn't shaved in three weeks. I probably could have seen that coming.
I pushed back just enough to let the hapless airport employee know that I had a tight connection to make, but not so much that I would need to change my flight from inside of a German prison cell. I think the fact that I had a sleeping two year old laying in a carseat across my arms probably knocked down my threat level a little bit, and I made it through the additional screening without much more than a peek inside my bags and shoes.
Third stop: Passport Control. I used my sleeping toddler like a backstage pass, and walked us straight through to the front of the line. "Thank you, sorry, tight connection, thank you, sorry, tight connection."
We gave our passports to the agent, and tried to look like people who don't need additional questioning.
I always get a kick out of straight-faced immigration agents who look at a baby's passport, furrow their brow, look at the baby, back to the passport, baby, passport. "Mmm hmm. Yep, that's him." Please. It's a one inch photo of an infant. They all look the same. But I appreciate you making the effort.
This post is already going a little too long, but I need to digress for a minute. It's worth your time. When we got Mimi's passport, we took her to the passport office in Tucson to complete her application. We spent about an hour trying to get a photo of three-week-old Mimi with both of her eyes open at the same time. Nearly impossible. So with Quinn, we wised up (second kid, and all). I looked up the State Department requirements for passport photos, and we spent an afternoon having a makeshift photo session on our kitchen floor. This is what we came up with.
You're welcome. I told you it was worth your time.
I think the only type of human being on our planet that can look at this photo without smiling is a German immigration officer. Nothing, not even a wink. Come on man, this is amazing. You've got to validate that.
But there wasn't much time to perseverate on the agent's lack of humor. We still had a flight to catch. We ran through the terminal and got stopped at yet one more passport check. It's hard to get upset at a process that is meant to keep us safe, but it's not hard to get a bit of heartburn from it.
Convinced we missed our flight, we ran the rest of the way to the gate and found a line of people waiting out front. I've never been so happy about a flight delay! And somehow, miraculously, Mimi stayed asleep through all of it!
Although, I must have been a little too loud with my celebration. Kudos to Aimee for her amazing photo timing. When she started to take photo, I was looking at the camera and smiling. But in the interval between taking the camera out, and capturing the photo, Mimi started to stir. The moment Aimee captured was me panicking, shushing, and swearing all at the same time. Shhhhhhhhh...it.
We may or may not have delicately slipped our child a dissolving Benadryl tablet immediately after this photo was taken. Yes, right in the middle of the airport. We felt a little guilty, until we remembered our flight out here.
So with an awake but dazed toddler (and a stirring infant), we shuffled on to our last 10 hour flight until they're both at least in middle school.
Our bumpy check-in process back in Athens resulted in the ticket agent pitying us and upgrading our seats to a bulkhead row. There's absolutely no better way to fly with children.
Delightful.
That photo is a bit of selective editing, and the calm lasted about three minutes. But the flight home was still far, far easier than the flight out. For starters we were on a double decker Airbus 380, so Mimi had a legitimate staircase to climb up and down whenever she needed to burn off some energy. Granted, we won no parenting awards by letting our wobbly-footed two year old climb up and down stairs on a moving airplane, but we stayed close, and she survived. Desperate times.
There were no medical emergencies, the meal was a pretty decent bratwurst, and Mimi even slept for a few hours. We had a low bar for that flight, but it was about as easy as we could have asked for.
We landed in Houston with sanity intact, and worked our way through US customs and immigration. The only bit of excitement was an impromptu passport checkpoint that was set up in the international baggage claim area. We saw CBP agents looking concerned as the quickly paced the area, but it sounds like they found who they were looking for. Thankfully it wasn't the sweating, panting 6' 5" guy that hasn't shaved in three weeks.
We rechecked our bags to Tucson, and worked our way through the airport food court. We now had about three hours to kill, but that was when the other toddler-sized shoe dropped. Mimi alternated between fits of limitless energy, and five-second power naps on any horizontal surface she could find.
This was going to be rough.
After about an hour of emotional rollercoastering, I found myself getting disproportionally upset with Mimi's obstinance and occasional breakdowns. We were all going on hour 28 without any real sleep, so everyone was kind of loosing their mind.
I became a much better parent when I realized that Mimi had extremely little control over her emotions. She's exhausted, Benadryl woozy, and of course, still a two year old. Mimi was everyone's drunk friend from college. Keep your shoes on, Paul. Paul, please keep your shoes on. Come on now, Paul. You know this. No, Paul, over here. Over here, Paul. Oh Paul, did you just pee your pants?
But I was impressed with how well she was keeping it together, given the circumstances. And those circumstances got infinitely better when Mimi saw her old friend, choo choo!
I think the lesson here is that there quite a bit of joy to be found in riding the inter-terminal train if you know how to look for it. It took a couple of laps, but I eventually put down my phone, stopped reading the news, and embraced her wisdom.
Traveling with kids is equal parts harrowing and delightful. Sometimes. Depending on the day. I probably would be writing a different conclusion if this trip ended after our layover in the Munich airport three weeks ago. But now that I'm comfortably back in my own home, with my children napping, and my feet up on the couch, I can take a more sentimental approach.
Say, for instance, if we didn't have a kid that we were actively trying to rescue from a breakdown at the Houston airport, we would, ourselves, have needed rescuing. Not metaphorically, but literally. As we were waiting for the elevator to take us down to our gate, we saw a huge fire truck come racing across the tarmac. We couldn't quite see where the crew ran to, but as we balanced two kids, three bags, and a stroller on the escalator (after the overhead speaker announced that the elevator was out of service), we realized that the fire department was working on extracting the people who got in the elevator ahead of us.
If we weren't traveling with kids, we wouldn't have bonded with the five people sitting in our immediate vicinity on the incredibly small plane that our daughter was losing her mind on. Thankfully, they were all parents.
And best of all, if we weren't traveling with kids, I would have wasted this lovely sunrise by sleeping in past 4 am.
At least she's cute.
But despite the sleep deprivation and manic plane rides, it couldn't have been more worth it. The scenery was only outdone by the food, and the people were delightful. But the real joy was getting to spend so much time with our kids while they're still young. We're constantly reminded about how quickly they grow up, and we were so grateful to get to experience this stage with them.
Especially with this as the backdrop.
We're really lucky.
