Prelude to a Big Adventure

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After months of planning and booking and arranging, the day is finally getting near. This will be our first trip to Greece, and our first family sailing trip! We will spend 7 days sailing in the South Ionian off the west coast of Greece. We will visit the islands of Lefkada, Kefalonia, Ithaka, Meganisi. Since we fly into Athens, we will also spend a night there and have a bit of time to visit the Acropolis and maybe even the new Acropolis Museum. That's the plan. It's coming together. There is much excitement and a bit of apprehension.

In the news, the Greek economy is tanking. Speculators are betting on Greece defaulting on their loans, which makes the interest rate on their loans go up, which increases the likelihood of them defaulting on their loans. Hmm, what's wrong with this picture? There are rumours of draconian cutbacks in exchange for European and IMF help. There have been demonstrations and riots in Athens. Will our holiday be disrupted? You bet it will, but not the way we were expecting...

We are supposed to fly to Athens this Saturday. It's Thursday afternoon and suddenly we find that Irish airports are closed due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Eyjafjallajökull. Huh? By nightfall all airports in northern Europe are closed. All of them. Including Paris Charles de Gaulle.

The Aviation Authority is reassessing the situation every 6 hours. We listen to the news constantly, hoping for a shift in the wind that will bring salvation. When will the airlines fly again? If we do get to Athens, will our return flight be cancelled? Would we mind if it was?

Monday. Outbound flight cancelled. Back to work. Depressed.

After much hesitation, we decide to try to go by train and ferry instead. The next few days and nights are spent surfing the web: tripadvisor.com, voyages-sncf.com, directferries.com, hotels.com, trenitalia.com. Can we cross Europe the old-fashioned way?

Yes we can! With a tightly-scheduled combination of trains and hotels and ferries, we can be in Vlikho to pick up the boat on Friday. The journey will take two extra days, but Laura still has the next week off school so it should work out. Sail Ionian is very understanding and says that our boat is not booked the following week so we can shift things by a few days if we need to.

Great! But expensive. Booking everything last minute means paying full price. And with the airport closures, everything is heavily booked. Things are filling up quickly. But it's now or never, so we decide to go for it!