We woke up knowing the vacation was over. I had my last iced coffee from Zio Cafe Bistro, and we went for a walk to find food. Samer and I bought a slice of orange cake, a local delicacy, from the Naxos Bakery for the ferry ride home. Besides packing and breakfast, we did very little in Naxos that morning.
On the way to our apartment a few days earlier, Samer’s luggage started to fall apart. We were worried about it for a long time, and because of this, we asked the hotelier to order us a taxi to the port. It is certainly walkable, but a taxi was necessary with a lot of luggage, much of it filled up with heavy souvenirs. The taxi never arrived, and I started to get worried, so I grabbed Samer’s failing luggage, bearhugged it because the wheels had seized, and walked it 800 meters to the port. My impatience got the better of me, and I am sure I could have found a taxi, but I was tired and wanted to move on.
I want to take this moment to delve into one of the most insane things I have ever seen. We got into our section of the ferry and went to sit down, but I could not find our seat numbers. Someone seemed to be sitting in them, but I also found the seats very difficult to find. Each seat has a number; it is not a row and label matrix system, meaning it is not row 1, seat b.
So then, you think, “ok, each row on this ferry has six seats, with an aisle down the middle, the first row will be seats 1 – 6. That’s wrong; the seats are as shown in the diagram below. Each box is a seat with its corresponding number above it.
They are numbered snake style, but not across the aisle; the system only jumps the aisle at the bottom of the seats on one side of the aisle, even though the back seats are not contiguous! So that means the first row of seats are 1,2,3, aisle, 73, 74, 76. If you are sitting on one side of the aisle, you need to think about them in ascending order, and if you are assigned to sit on the other side, you need to think about them in descending order. It was maddening.
Am I obsessing over this? For sure, but it is absolutely bonkers.
In Athens, we bought a new bit of luggage, and Joe went looking for that statue of Asclepius he’d been hunting for during the trip. We were staying in a different Airbnb, which was more in the central tourist zone. It was on Place Filomousou Eterias, and it was very nice.
We had dinner at Art Eden, where they had live music. The food was delicious. We had this quintessential dish of beans called Gigantes Plakis. It was very delicious. After a dessert and a drink near Monastiraki Square, we said good night to Athens and went to bed.