Our journey to Kalymnos
(Wait, what day is it?)

DFW–LHR
The journey to Kalymnos — leave on Wednesday night @ 11pm, arrive in London around 3pm, flight to Athens @8:30pm, arrive around 2:30am, flight to Kalymnos @10:10am, arrive around 11:10am. If you’re counting, this is about 30 hours of travel… and we are only halfway there as we sit in the airport lounge in London Heathrow. In our six hour layover we accidentally went through immigration and ended up on the outside of security, I’d like to say that the A gates in Terminal E were not well-indicated, and the experience was completely different last time we were in London on our way to Barcelona in 2019 with my dad.

LHR–ATH
Landed in Athens around 2:10am local time — after collecting our bags we were back on the outside of security, waiting until 5am when the Sky Express ticket counter opened. We were hoping for a quiet bank of chairs to nap in but couldn’t sleep plus overnight construction and a smattering of weary travelers doing the same made it a loud and surreal place to spend these early hours… but when you travel this many hours it’s just a series of boarding and napping — focusing on the next leg.

Finally the gate opened up and we were through, back into another airport lounge, I have to say, our chase reserve card with priority pass are awesome for this — we’ve had great experiences for what we pay, good food, nice places to relax, get drinks and coffee, refill our water bottles. Now we wait for our friends to join us after they’ve spent the past few days in Athens… then we board our last flight and will be in Kalymnos! I’m hoping the jetlag will hit so I can get a nap on the plane — an hour flight will not be sufficient for catching up, but hopefully it will be enough to make some climbing or hiking possible this afternoon.

ATH–JKL