In Athens!

Delta flight 232 departed Seattle at 2:15 PM, slightly late, banked to the North and headed out over Canada for the ten hour flight to Amsterdam. The flight was completely full, mostly crying babies and screaming young children with a few sickly folks hacking and coughing just to make sure no one got any sleep. Although the flight was scheduled for ten hours, it must have taken at least twenty hours which required mid-air refueling. Fortunately I was able to sleep for at least nine minutes so we arrived in Amsterdam fully refreshed and ready to catch our next flight to Athens on KLM.

The KLM plane is a Boeing 737-800 which is configured for a single class, although the front cabin has the same six abreast seating for the entire airplane, the First Class class divider is easily moved to make the FC section as many seats as necessary, they simply fold down a tray in the middle seat so only two of the seats are occupied. This provides some flexibility to configure First Class with virtually any number of seats. I was just watching the flight attendant chatting with the first office, something you generally do not see in the US since there are some rules about not leaving the flight deck door open. The captain was in the biffy so I assume the plane was ion autopilot.

Amsterdam Schiopol airport is reputed to be “the most beautiful airport in the world”, I think mainly because it has endless shopping opportunities, so I am guessing whoever wrote the review of the airport is probably a person who likes to shop. Fortunately we only had a little over one hour between flights so not much time for shopping, the down side is on our return trip we have a three hour layover to buy whatever time we missed during our vacation.

My little computer mouse decided to quit working on the SEA AMS leg of the trip so I am struggling with the touch pad on the computer. For some reason, my fat hands do not work with the touchpad and if I am not careful, all of the words I have just typed are jumbled and I have to start over. If only I was able to take advantage of the shopping at AMS, then I could have replaced my mouse, I am hopeful I will be able to find a mouse somewhere in Greece, Turkey, or Egypt. With any luck I can find a mouse faster than a café moulin (coffee grinder) in Nice.

We wandered the airport last night since it is across the street from our hotel, The airport is new and very nice with lots of shopping. There are a couple of nice museum displays showing artifacts found during the construction of the airport, it is my guess anywhere you put a shovel in the ground, artifacts will be found. We had dinner in the airport in a small restaurant. There is a food court with the usual Sbarro's, Dominoes Pizza, Asian Cuisine, some authentic Greek food and of course the McDonalds. McDonalds offers a shrimp sandwich, fried shrimp, shrimp salad and spring rolls, all nicely fried. Even the 'healthy' salad had fried something in it.

I did find a replacement mouse for 25 euros ($35.44) since this price seemed a bit steep, I will continue looking and keep correcting my mistakes as I type. At this moment it is 10:10 PM in Athens, 1:10 PM in Seattle; with a nine hour time difference our bodies are somewhat confused, and we are struggling with trying to sleep.

Tomorrow, at 0500, we board an Aegean Airlines plane for Rhodes where we will stay in the medieval city founded by the Knights of St. John, one of the last of the crusading knight’s organizations founded in 1107, more history on that later.

Rhodes http://www.rhodestravels.com/