Day 4: Almost There

Our plane lands in Athens at 5:15am and pulls up directly to the terminal!  This in and of itself feels like a huge triumph!  No walking, no trams or shuttles…right to the gate!  It's the least they could do.  Really!! I partly expected people to applaud my arrival.  Certainly, what I've been through to get here is one for the record books and headlines:
 

"AMERICAN WOMAN AND HER DOG PERFORM SUPERHUMAN FEATS IN TRAVEL TO GREECE"  

As I make my way to the luggage belt I am pleasantly surprised to see that my pup is already there and waiting for me.  At this point, he is again my puppy and back in my good graces.  He is still totally drugged up and sleeping peacefully, completely unaware of his last flight across southern Europe.

I am pretty giddy at this point because any time now my "knight in shining polo shirt" will be here to rescue me and, if he knows what's good for him, take over doggie duties for a bit!! Mama needs a break!!  We arranged that Kip would take the ferry over from Crete to Athens to get us from the airport and then we would all take the ferry back to Crete together.

I am now OFFICIALLY starving and purchase the biggest sugar doughnut I have ever had, and a nice, semi-cold diet coke—to wash it down. Breakfast of Champions.  Does a body good.  So far, Greek food is OK in my book.

Kip arrives around 8am and I am literally almost in tears when I see him!  A bit of relief, happiness, and delirium has taken over me.  My happiness is again short-lived when he informs me that we will have to stay at the airport until 5pm until we are allowed to board the ferry at 6pm.  This is when you know this is true love.  Lesser relationships would have ended right then and there.  Shouts of "how could you do this to me?!?!" would have been heard for miles.  But no, I give in and figure, at least we're all together in this now.

I try to eat again, but I am seriously too tired to chew.   Kip tells me about his past few days and they sound pretty bad too, but my travels beat his any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  I should have offered him a little Old Spice to toughen him up, just for good measure.
 We sit and wait and wait. Every now and again, I reach into the crate and touch Gibbs just to make sure he is in fact still breathing.  Thumbs up!  All good.  We have never seen him this calm, even when he's sleeping (oddly enough), and it is actually nice for a change!

After a few hours of continuing to stew in my own juices…a moment of clarity! HEY! I have my suitcase and clean clothes. Yippee!!!  I go to the ladies room to change.  I grab a fresh pair of jeans and...Oh My God?!?!  What is that smell?!?!   Did the sewage back up into the bathroom?!?!?  No...I just took off my shoes!!  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I never knew feet could take on such an odor!!  You’d have thought I walked across Europe in those shoes!! I went ahead and threw my socks in the trash and if it weren’t my only pair of sneakers they may have gone in the trash as well.  I give my socks a chance at redemption and toss my Old Spice into the trash as well.  Let stinky feet and old man musk fight it out!!  
Halfway through changing with pants undone standing in the wash closet with just a bra on, an unsuspecting gentleman, who was bringing his young daughter in to use the bathroom, opens the door and gets an eyeful. At this point it's all par for the course and all I can do is look back at him and just shrug my shoulders.

I return to my knight and his trusty sidekick and finally get the courage to ask the time (because somewhere during this trip I lost my favorite Swatch watch).  I'm waiting for him to tell me that it's actually earlier than when I arrived because time has started to go in reverse.  It wouldn't have really surprised me.  Instead, he informs me that it is 12:30pm.  Shoot me now. I feel like I've been in the airport so long I should be paying rent. But I am so thankful Kip is there because he makes me laugh for what seems like the first time in forever.

So as the day ticks on, I examine the bruises on my hurt leg, try unsuccessfully to sleep, blah blah blah… We decide before leaving to head to the ferry, we should wake Gibbs and take him out to do his business. I don't know what they gave him in Lisbon, but all those hours later and he still couldn't put on those flip flops (see day 3).  My boy is a lightweight!  Ha!

Fast forward to the ferry…

We make the ride through Athens to the port—I don't know where these people learn to drive— and TA-DA!!!! There she is… THE FERRY! Allure of The Seas she is not, but it'll do.  Finally, the last leg of this unbelievable voyage is here.

Time Awake: 34 hours give or take time changes   Food Intake: A bunch of crap
I don't know how this whole ferry thing works and Kip tells me he slept on a bench on his trip over.

WHAT?!?!?!

Oh, HEYLLL NO!

I was very sorry to hear that Kip had to do this but there was no way in hell I was sleeping on a bench.  And did I mention that the ferry ride is NINE HOURS LONG?!?!?  I want a bed and I want it now!!!  Kip wisely reads all this information from the look on my face and we upgrade to a sleeping room!!  We are shown to our cabin and Gibbs is taken to his holding cell on the Doggie Deck for the duration of the ride (no dogs allowed in the rooms). We were a bit nervous about how Gibbs would be, but he seemed to be doing better the moment we left the airport.  If he could have pissed on a plane or a pilot before he left for good measure, he might've. At this point the drugs he had were wearing off and he had some food and was almost back to normal minus the huffing and puffing (a large plus). My worries of him being brain damaged had faded away.

 I tell Kip I won’t be able to settle down until we leave because after what I have gone through to get this damn dog so far, I have a somewhat misguided feeling that someone might doggie snatch him…clearly, delirium has progressed to a full case of paranoia at this point.   Don’t ask, I can’t explain it.  I blame sleep deprivation!  Kip says, don't worry.  The boat departs PROMPTLY at 9pm and everything is OK.  One more hour and we'll be on our way.

I go to help Gibbs get situated and put down a blanket and some towels so the prince won't be cold (and you wonder why he thinks he's a human). I go back to the room and decide to take a shower. I tell Kip of my deodorant troubles and he very politely says “Ahhhh, I wondered why you smelled like my father”. Nice. We both take showers using only the liquid hand soap provided at the sink.

Unfortunately, after my shower I have to put the same old clothes back on.  (Today, I am still mad that I had to do this; ALLEGEDLY, Kip asked me a question about needing anything out of my luggage. ALLEGEDLY, my answer was no and Kip had our luggage stored for the duration of the ride.  Clearly, this question wasn't asked or I had taken a temporary leave of my faculties, otherwise, my answer definitely, certainly, totally, would have been a resounding HELL YES I want my luggage!)

I go back one last time to check on Gibbs before we depart.  At this point, there are two more dogs in other kennels.  I look at them and then to my dog and think “Wow!  What a spoiled ass bulldog you are with your water, bone and fuzzy blankets.  Boy, you don't know how good you've got it!”  I put my paranoia behind me and I go to bed.  It is now 9:15pm and we are to arrive in Crete by 5am.

I sleep. I sleep all the way until 3am.  My internal clock is all messed up.  I don't know what day or time my body thinks it is, but it's awake.  I get up and decide to check on Gibbs and get situated to leave the boat because we are almost there and I want off this boat and onto the land of the place that I'm actually supposed to be as soon as possible!

A few things go through my head while I make my way down to the doggie deck:
1…  Wow.  I am surprised how smooth this ride is.
2… Wow. I am so glad I didn’t get sea sick.

Earlier I had scraped my right index finger on Gibbs’ cage trying to fit the pin into lock it and now it was really hurting. This is the ferry cage (aka, CELL), not his crate from home. It is not a very complicated thing, but seeing as I’m totally out of sorts and my mind isn’t sending clear messages to the rest of my body, I struggled.  Plus, this pin had about 20 years of sea worthy rust.  I start to worry about when my last tetanus shot was. At this point, I have no idea what tetanus is or what it does to a person but I am very sure I now have it.  I contemplate tetanus all the way until I’ll find myself outside on the deck!

Ah, Fresh Air!!
I expect to scan the horizon to see if I can see land and I immediately realize we've already arrived!  My next thought is...

“Huh.  This place looks a lot like the port that we left last night.”

I head back to the room excited to tell Kip that we made it to port early. I find Kip is up and getting ready to get off the boat.  I then ask him the question that will seal our fate for the next 12 hours…

 “Is the port in Crete similar to the one in Athens???”

Puzzled by my question, he says no, then asks me why.

(This is where if this was a scary movie you'd insert the dramatic music that comes at the climax when you realize the killer is making calls from inside the house!!!)

I tell him, now very obviously, that all this time we've been aboard and we HAVEN'T… GONE…  ANYWHERE!!!

And did I just sneeze?