When the Cheshire emerges...

A year ago today I was at Athens International Airport, on the plane going home.

Mum and I relieved to be settled ahead of the long flight back.

After Thessaloniki we caught the train back to Athens. A journey that took almost two hours than it should have, not least because the train stopped in the middle of nowhere about an hour in... for a SMOKE BREAK. I'm not kidding, look.


The last days in Athens were pretty chilled. I didn't want to stay there again for as long as we did, especially because we stayed in the suburbs again - but I did see some beautiful sunsets, had some more great food and succumbed to buying shoes I'd spotted all the way back in Santorini (they were wedges that had gone down by 40 Euros from the first sighting though, sweet). It's a shame that my afternoon at the beach, the last afternoon before heading to the airport, was ruined because some middle-aged sleazeball tried chatting me up in the water and then tried luring me away with him. Seriously. Ew.

***

I wasn't sure if I wanted to leave this time around. In 2010 I had almost no desire to go home, but a year had changed a lot. It was a daunting prospect after almost four months away, but I was hopeful as well about getting into a routine again, and really committing to looking for a job and/or pursuing travel-related freelance work. But also thinking about USA 2012, which had popped into my head with their financial woes in that particular month (good of course for the Aussie dollar).

Ironically, it ended up being our shocker of a stopover that made me overly anxious to get home.

We had booked rooms at the hotel inside Singapore's Changi Airport. Got there, not available until 8am - three hours after we arrived. It was a 17hr stopover with the intention we'd get that morning rest, then go to the city in the afternoon refreshed to have a look before flying out. The rooms were eventually lost, then no-one proceeded to move from a group of couches for hours at a time. When I finally managed to get my mum and brother to make the trip with me, they could only sustain a quick lunch (at McDonalds of all places) and a short walk along Orchard Avenue before the long return because of their jetlag. So I, clearly least affected, was restless and forced to weigh it out. Why did I not explore myself? Do not even go there. By then I was dying to get home.

A few photos now, from (until the flight itself) a less hectic end of my journey.

Had a rather embarrassing one of my brother at Singapore's Changi Airport, but I'll save it for his 21st. Instead, the area I mostly hung around.

A breaking dawn soon before touchdown in Adelaide.