8/31/15
Santorini, Greece → Athens, Greece

I woke up at 4:00 a.m. to prep for my 5:00 a.m. fantasy football draft. I was in the war room (patio porch) ready to draft. The twelve cups of wine had gotten to Ash, and I picked my head up to hear her running to the bathroom.

We had to be out of our room by 1:00 p.m. today. I blew my nose, and a rust-colored amoeba-looking glob found its way into the tissues. It was time I took the moped down to the pharmacy. We were heading to Athens for two nights and then to Thailand. I had to go into Asia with a clean bill of health if I wanted a chance at not dying.

When I reached the pharmacy, I walked in and told the pharmacist I was pretty certain I had a sinus infection, and he threw me an antibiotic off the shelf and asked for six dollars. I have done this a few times now since we got to Europe, and it blows my mind every time. I grabbed a Sprite for Ash’s stomach, and jetted up the hill in good spirits. An antibiotic to a sick traveler is like a new video game to a teenager.

We were deciding between going down to the beach one more time or spending time with Tina and Petros. It was an easy decision. We watched a National Geographic show on snakes, and at one point Tina fell out of her chair when the snake attacked the camera. We all laughed until our sides hurt. My side already hurt from the crash, but I laughed through the pain.

Eventually Petros checked his clock and said we should get on the road. We both hugged Tina and exchanged e-mails. Tina had given us something we had not had in a long time: she had given us the love and care of a mother.

This place may have beaten us up a little bit, but it was a give-and-take world. It gave us cliffs to jump and pee off of, sunsets indescribable by the written word, and people who became like family. We were going to miss Santorini; the Acropole Sunrise Hotel had truly felt like home. We double-cheek kissed Petros and his beard and set off to Athens for our last stop in Europe.

I was into my third Lord’s Prayer during takeoff when my head felt like it had exploded. I grabbed my ears to make sure they were still attached. I had completely forgotten I had enough pressure in my head to make Michael Jordan miss a game-winner. I tried popping my ears, but it was no use; the pain was unbearable. I survived the flight, but we had twelve hours of flying coming up, and I was deeply concerned.

It was 2:00 a.m. when we landed in Athens due to a delay. We felt awful for our Airbnb host for keeping him up this late. We asked him if he could just leave the key somewhere, but he told us Athens was too dangerous for that. Well, that’s comforting.

Our sixth-floor Airbnb studio was spacious and, most important, cold. It was ninety-five degrees in Athens, even at nighttime. After showing us all the amenities of the place, our host opened up a bottle of liquor from the freezer, poured three double shots the size of Jell-O containers, and said a Greek toast. Ash and I looked at each other, shocked. It was 2:30 a.m. and neither of us was in the physical condition for shots, but we couldn’t say no. The man had just recited an epic Greek toast, picked us up from the airport, and kindly showed us around in the middle of the night. Cheers to our last European city—gulp, gulp, gulp.