My flight to Greece

I check out of the hotel at 1 pm and I'm off to the O'Hare. My flight leaves at 7:15pm. Checking in does not go well. One of my suitcases is light, the other too heavy. I'm forced to take items out of own bag and transfer them to another, at the airport, in front of everyone. Thankfully I'm in no rush and the airport is not busy at all. There are no crowds and no lines. While I'm doing the transfer the scale goes down, it an issue with the battery. I get waved through without having my bags weighed again. After I do the transfer I can no longer fit one of my pillows into my suitcase so I opt to carry it on the plane. It looks odd as I walk through the airport with a pillow but so what.

Question: Why do I have a pillow in my suitcase. I bought in Chiang Mai. If I can fit it in a bag, why not keep it.   

I get to the check-in counter and told it will cost an extra $100 to check two bags. Really? Shit! I did not know this ahead of time. I'm down $100 and I've not even gotten on the plane. Oh well.

I get to the gate with hours to spare. Thankfully I'm able to connect to the internet via Boingo for less than $8 and I begin the process of looking for a place to stay in Athens. The search goes well but I don't find anything concrete.

We board right on time and I get a cute girl sitting next to me. We chat a bit. She is from Paris and has been doing an internship in Las Vegas. The internship was for her Master's. She is in love with a poker dealer. That's not going to end well. I'm sure of that. Her boyfriend is submersed in the world of poker and living in sin city. 

My flight to Athens goes by way of Paris. I get off the plan and follow everyone. At one point I realize I'm not going where everyone else is going so I stop and look at one of the monitors to find out where I will be boarding my next flight from. I'm not pointed to a specific gate but rather a group of gates, 70 - 76. I do an about face and head back to the same terminal I came from but I've gone far enough that I need to get my passport stamped before I can turn around. Now I have China, Thailand and France stamped on my passport. That's cool. 

I get to the right area of Charles De Gaulle Airport and have a nine hour layover and I'm in Paris. Nine hours in a small terminal at the end of the airport. It's a long nine hours. During the layover I eat a meal, buy an adapter for my tablet and laptop so I can charge these things during my layover. This is critical as I do lots of research during my layover and find a place to stay in Athens. I also take a nap. The terminal goes quiet after an hour or so. I'm the only passenger/customer in the terminal for hours. It's nice. I've eaten, done research and now it's quiet. Very quiet. Sleep time quiet. There is a nice couch in the terminal near me so I mosey over and get comfortable. I fall asleep. It is a welcome sleep.

After a couple hours of sleep I am wakened by some noise. People. People being people. Once awake I begin to panic over my need to research. I need all bases covered with redundancy. Sleep is no longer possible so I get up and get back on the Internet. I'm so grateful for the Internet, it makes traveling much easier. The purchase of the tablet was a good one.

Eventually the nine hours passes and I board the flight to Athens. This is the first flight since leaving Thailand that the flight attendants are cute and thin. What is it with all the obese flight attendants? ---- This is my observation of american flight attendants, they are old fat women with horrible attitudes. I had one flight where every flight attendant was obese. Every one of them. I had another flight that each flight attendant was over fifty and a grumpier bunch of women you will never find. What ever happened to customer service? I'm old enough to remember the days were stewardesses were all smoking hot. And happy. Those were the days a person could smoke on the planes. The old days. 

On the flight to Athens we get a meal, a Greek meal that was tasty and we got a drink. I ask for some vodka. I'm told wine or beer only so I ask for water and the flight attendant is stunned. I don't just want alcohol, I want vodka. If you have no vodka I would like a glass of water. I'm not sure why she finds this so shocking?

During my flight to Athens I am sitting next to a high school science teacher. We have a nice chat. She gives some advice on Greece and the islands I should visit.