Greece, it seems, was not meant to happen for us.
After initially booking the trip in early April, the Purrito was forced to spend what felt like an inordinate amount of time and effort to re-book the trip once we decided that we’d like to stay another day; the vagaries of Expedia and non-instantaneous hotel cancellations resulted in having to slide the trip back two weeks, and losing the travel insurance. Apparently had we called, cancelled, and then made a completely new booking, we would have been fine, insurance-wise. As we called, asked to modify, but wound up cancelling and subsequently re-booking, the insurance was used and no longer afforded any protection (which we didn’t know).
Then there was the Grexit crisis over the summer which had us wondering if we’d be going at all, or if we’d be risking wading into a disintegrating social situation.
And finally, the cold/sinus infection/whatever-the-hell-it-is that hit me like a truck on Monday, and which ultimately ended up keeping us in Paris on Thursday morning.
I find that I have trouble visualizing myself in random places; whenever we book a trip, I have difficulty imagining myself in that place, and so it’s not particularly real or even very exciting that we’re going (a source of frustration to the Purrito, I’m sure) until I actually get to said place.
I had the opposite experience yesterday; laying in bed, I heard the church bells announce 11:30. Probably due to the fog induced by the decongestant, I found myself acutely aware and incredulous of the fact that there was an airplane sitting at a gate at CDG. Said airplane had two seats (exit row, with an aisle seat for me [thank you, love]) that we should have been in. Yet we weren’t; we were in bed. We wouldn’t be taking off shortly, we wouldn’t be landing in three hours, we wouldn’t be buying a ticket on the 3 line to get to the city center, and we wouldn’t find ourselves standing there, taken aback at the sight of the acropolis.
It was an intensely dissociative and surprisingly confusing mental state.
In the immediate term, our decision to cancel was vindicated by the fact that the walk that we took to what the Purrito terms “our neighborhood greasy spoon,” le Recrutement, was physically taxing. I’m not sure the hike up to the acropolis in 88° (F) weather would have gone particularly well.
Quell the disappointment this does not.
Fezzik In Paris 