2/4 - Sad Farewells

We're sitting in Narita airport waiting for our flight to Heathrow (first leg of flight to Athens), which has been delayed by 1-hour. All is well though.

A massive thankyou to Mari, Keiko, and Jun, who accompanied us into Shinjuku this morning so we could catch the Narita Express out to the airport.

You might have some inkling of just how "taihen" (extreme) that might be in the peak hour rush (our Shinjuku Narita Express left at 9:40, so we were travelling in before 9am) of Tokyo with 8 bags of luggage and 2 kids. It all went smoothly though (but to get some inkling of the logistics involved I'll say that Mari came over to the house yesterday and picked up our main luggage which was left at her place overnight, and picked us up at 8am this morning - we drove back to her place, were joined by Jun and Keiko, and walked the luggage into Kichijoji station).

Farewells at Shinjuku happened too quick as is always the case in these situations. One moment you're standing around making idle conversation - waiting - the next the train is there and you're rushing luggage onboard amidst tearful hugs. We all had a tear in our eyes on the train.

Well, the next leg of the adventure is about to begin. We're not really sure of what to expect. We have a lot of travelling yet to get to Marika (Maria's cousin she has never met on Santorini) - a 12 hour flight to Heathrow. Two or three hours before our flight to Athens. Athens flight is about three and a half hours and puts us in Athens at 2:30am. Then we need to kill some time, but also get down to the port of Pireaus in order to catch a Ferry at 7:30am. That ferry should deliver us to Santorini about 12:30pm. Well over 30 hours of door-to-door travelling. We'll just take it as it comes.