London, United Kingdom

So much for a sleep, our seat mate who did not say boo the entire journey was wriggly and kept the window open with bright light coming through which worked against the natural body clock. Even though we flew at night, as we were heading over America and the Atlantic the time zone flicked to morning complete with blazing sunrise. In fairness to him it was probably just as much the ridiculously cramped seat configuration and lack of any leg room that made it impossible to get in a position that would facilitate sleep. By the time we got to bed in Athens, we had been awake about 28hrs.

Anyhow the staff on the flight continued to be cheerful workers and the tail wind landed us in London nearly an hour early in a grey intermittent drizzly 14 degree day! Man Heathrow is huge and the process of transferring terminals even not being sleep deprived would be challenging. Fortunately they have lots of purple uniformed helpers stationed every where to help direct you around.

We were tired but still coping ok and decided to have some lunch as it would be a while before dinner. Food options were quite good and we settled on a high tea tray 24 GBP and a duck liver parfait with apple jelly and toasted brioche for 7.50 GBP and a coffee each. After we had eaten we then felt really tired and in need of a sleep but there were no options unfortunately. We ended up with a total of 5hrs at the airport between landing and take off again.

Our Aegan Airlines plane was a small budget style airbus with no movie, but we got a budget tiny meal of meat balls and mash. Seats were quite thin in padding like a city bus verses regional but the minute we had even a delayed blink we could feel ourselves sinking into sleep. Trouble was we had to wait till meal service was over before we could try and get 40 winks. In the end both of us managed about 30 mins sleep and its amazing how that restored a feeling of humanity!

The plane was full of locals and we felt quite foreign. The busy hostesses were friendly and sounded cute with their English which sometimes lost words in translation. When we arrived at Athens they did no checks other than passport which is strange after NZ and Canadian border controls triple checking. As mentioned our hotel is just across the road from the airport which was wonderful – a real bed which we can stretch out in – ah bliss.

Needless to say – a very big and tiring travel day. It was a real pity about our plan to travel and sleep at night but the important thing is we got here safe. It still feels really weird the idea of being on holiday as it has not sunk in yet. If anything it is like a time warp and we are back on the last holiday where we left off, and work is a million miles away.