The emptiness of our hotel blared in my ears. A few other guests occupied the place with us, their presence ghostlike. We might have heard their movements at times, but it was probably okay—with the virus hovering like it was—if we didn’t run into them.
The restaurants of Athens shuttered, we stood in line for takeout from Savvas kebab shop for our first dinner in the city. Nearby customers took drags from cigarettes, their smoke drifting our way, but the savory aromas floating from the shop’s grill won out. Up at the window, the choosing was easy. We only had a few options: grilled chicken or beef—alongside vegetables, French fries, and a sauce of our choice—tucked into a cone-shaped pita for 2.9 Euro ($3.20.) Food portions in Greece were large, their prices small. And costs were small for everything else too—except gas, which set us back 5 Euro/liter ($5.65/quarter gallon.) We ate dinner in our hotel room that night, our open window overlooking Monastiraki square, the hubbub of humanity wafting in on the evening breeze.
In the morning, we hopped the Athens Open Tour’s Gray Line and explored the city by bus. Disease might have bullied the metropolis into closures, but it wouldn’t shut down our sense of adventure—or that of the tourists around us. The route showed us City Hall, the War Museum, and the Temple of Zeus, and we disembarked for photos at the Acropolis and Parthenon. I gazed in the direction of the Areopagus, a hill where the Apostle Paul once spoke to the people of Athens about their altar to the Unknown God—that God, now known, and traveling with us down the streets of Athens, its alleys scattered with litter and its buildings tattooed with art.
The next day, we boarded the Riviera Beaches bus line, down Poseidonos Avenue, and along the seaside. Marinas, beaches, and a war cemetery memorial lined our path. Never in any European country had I witnessed more runners out for exercise, and I thought of a young Greek in 1936, Konstantin Kondylis, the first runner in the history of the Olympic Torch Relay who launched the tradition for the opening of the Olympic Games. But we weren’t runners as much as consumers on this trip, and as we approached Marina Glyfada, our stomachs growled. We spied a familiar fast-food restaurant. All tourists should probably try McDonald’s when abroad, shouldn’t they?
Only a few of us were allowed inside the Golden Arches at once, so we waited in the sunshine outside. When it was our turn, Husband and I entered. We placed our order with a masked employee. The menu on the wall listed new-to-us items, a Greek Mac (two beef patties in a pita) and a shrimp salad. I raised my phone to capture the sign.
“No photos!” a worker said, waving gloved hands in the air. “No photos!”
“Oh, sorry.” I slid my cell back into my bag.
And that scolding wouldn’t be my last. Murphy and I strode into a grocery store on Athinas, and an employee standing at the door instructed us to back off. A queue curved outside the store—something I hadn’t noticed—and our presence inside would have violated the number allowed in at one time too. Again, we awaited our turn. What was it like in Greece, minus pandemic rules? Would we ever have a chance to find out?
We strolled through Athens on foot, vivid graffiti illustrating our wanderings; artists had scrawled on every surface of the ancient city. We found shops specializing in only one thing: sausage or feta or eggs, but then came the Varvakios Agora, the iconic fish and meat market in central Athens with its endless options. Coronavirus restrictions had not yet reached the vendors there; no protective glass separated us from the merchants who called out prices of beef, pork, lamb, goat, chickens, and rabbit. Entire tables were devoted to organ meats like liver, kidneys, and intestines, and the place sold every kind of fish in the Aegean and even some from China, North Africa, and Portugal. And if the indoor bounty wasn’t enough, outside we passed shops with spices spilling from baskets and stands heaped with colorful fruits.
On our last day, the four of us took a break from racking up steps on our pedometer apps to gather in Husband’s and my hotel room. The idea of returning home pulled at my thoughts—an unseen weight over the trip’s ending. During our time on the island of Crete, we discovered our return flights had been cancelled. We lingered on the phone one day while an agent on the other end of the line tweaked our futures, changing our tickets home to March 17, a day earlier than our original reservations. Now, with our hours in Greece dwindling, it was time to confirm our flights.
I set out snacks for our friends: oregano chips, orange-stuffed olives, fresh-cut fruit. After a few contacts with the airlines, Murphy’s and Adonis’ check-ins were complete. Husband and I, however, begged KLM by voice message, email, and WhatsApp to please respond to us. No word. And while we waited, the kiwi, apple, and pear I had cut up browned in its dish on the coffee table.
Would we still have seats on a flight home? And what about our shuttle driver who promised to pick us up a block away when the time came? Did he know we needed him at 3:00 a.m. the next morning to bring us to the airport? We couldn’t reach him. Adonis even tried to find the website connected with his transport service, but it had vanished. What would happen now?
True to his word, our shuttle driver pulled up at 3:00 a.m. on the desolate street a block away from our hotel and greeted us, his tone chipper for the early hour. The man had remembered us after all.
Our luggage loaded in the van, I stared once more at the Acropolis, standing guard on its rocky hill; it watched me back. “Beauty and the flame of life,” actress Eleanora Duse had called the glorious site. We drove off, and I focused my gaze back to reality and away from the ancient citadel—because it was easier leaving beauty that way.
Tension tightened my chest as we stepped inside Athens International Airport. Even though we were unable to confirm our flights, would Husband and I still get boarding passes today? The kiosk answered in the affirmative by spitting out the paperwork we needed, and soon our luggage was taken from us.
As we waited in line at Customs, COVID-19 turned the strangers around us—some of them with masks, many not—into suspects. I frowned at my slit-eyed assessment of the citizens of the world waiting in line with me. Would this be my new life, distrusting others for what they may or may not carry?
I shook off my worries. All may look dark—like the shops and restaurants in the airport, closed for now—but maybe everything and everyone would be better soon. Husband popped a cough drop to quell the tickle in his throat. His cough, due to a cold during the trip, would no doubt sound sinister to the other travelers.
After our last breakfast of the trip, we split ways with Adonis and Murphy. Different flights through different cities at different times. If not together, at least we would all be home today.
On our flight from Athens to Amsterdam, a flight attendant chatted with a passenger behind us.
“Soon, two-thirds of all flights will be cut,” she said. “Right now, we’re just working to bring everyone home.”
And from the looks of the busy airport and packed flight, many were in a hurry to get there. Nothing makes one pick up one’s step quite like a global pandemic licking at one’s heels.
In my seat, I tapped through in-flight movie choices, imagining our amended future. Husband coughed.
“Cover that thing up,” a guy across the aisle said to him, grimacing. It didn’t matter that Husband already had.
It would be a long flight.
As we checked off each leg of our trip, my breathing eased. Before landing in Atlanta, flight attendants distributed forms, all of their questions concerning the Coronavirus. We checked boxes and filled blanks. Husband sucked on more lozenges. The wheels touched down and screeched to a halt, but the flight crew told us to remain seated. Two agents from the CDC—wearing plastic face shields, masks, and gloves—boarded and worked their way down the aisles, collecting paperwork.
One stopped at us and skimmed our forms. He zeroed in on Husband. “You have a cough?”
“Yeah.”
He took Husband’s temperature and moved on without a word.
One more flight to go.
We landed in the Twin Cities at 8:00 p.m. on March 17, 2020. The worldwide virus now lapping at every shore, we had left Greece just in time. We gathered our luggage—and our girls—and hurried into quarantine for fourteen days, per the CDC’s recommendation.
I flipped through trip photos in the quiet of lockdown. The Greece we had sampled didn’t taste like enough, and like Odysseus, we returned home in a different way and time, blown by winds we hadn’t expected.
“We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest,” another Greek, Aristotle Onassis, once said. “We must learn to sail in the high winds.”
And maybe one day, those winds would bring us back.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.