Next week I’m off to London on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class from the D to LHR in the hopes of running the marathon in Athens the Sunday after. The original plan called for taking a train from London to Athens because I can’t drink, eat, and party as I would like before the race. Given my lame injury, the exorbitant prices for train tickets, and the opening and closing of routes due to the humanitarian crisis, I decided to be a wimp and fly to Athens instead.
As a newly minted Hyatt Diamond member and uninspired blogger, I thought I would go from London to Paris and write another mind numbing review of the Park Hyatt Vendome: “And because I was Diamond, I was upgraded to a suite and was given free breakfast, a value of 100 euros!” Luckily, my blogging soul was saved by expensive flights and bad routing to and from Paris.
With no Avios options, I almost settled for the lazy choice: fly Ryanair to Greece the same day I arrived in London. I tried to rationalize that this would give me more time to see Greece. Simultaneously, I couldn’t ignore the voice in my head that was mocking me for what a travel softy I had become. “Oh no what will you do without the Park Hyatt? Your foot hurts. Maybe you shouldn’t run at all,” and on and on.
Committed to remaining a world explorer and not a sheltered sissy, I went to skyscanner.com typed in the origin of London and my destination of ‘everywhere’.
Here were a few of the results:
Going through each one by one, I needed to find a destination that gave me enough time to make my connection from London and had a reasonable price to Athens. Gibraltar would’ve been cool, Malta, Cyprus, or the Canary Islands would’ve been nice, but the one that fit was Warsaw, Poland.
I know going to Warsaw doesn’t require balls of steel but the idea of picking a random place and booking it is a lot more adventurous than just flying to Athens early and consequently violating TPOL’s Travel Philosophy. Not to mention it is another destination that I could add to my Country Count List which will reach 76 after this trip.
Next time I go to Europe, I won’t pack a set itinerary. Instead, I’ll just use Skyscanner when I’m ready to move from one city to the next. That way I can try to salvage my reputation as an intrepid traveler and not a timid tourist.
