Ever Evolving Travel Plans

I'm a big fan of keeping work and vacations completely separate. In my opinion, there should be a massive gulf (or ocean, really) separating one from work while on vacation. Typically, I leave my laptop at home and turn off my phone's e-mail capabilities. I don't want anything to do with work.

This time, we actually brought my laptop to Greece - the agreement was to not open Outlook so I couldn't read any work e-mail. I kept my end of the agreement. However, when Ike was about to hit and all travel plans went out the window, my laptop turned out to be a lifesaver. Combine that with Skype and the ability to make plenty of calls to Continental for $.02 a minute, we were able to constantly work on travel plans when everything was going to pot. Simply put, I would strongly recommend bringing a laptop when traveling on vacation - just be sure that you have the willpower to stay away from work or just leave it off unless you really need it. If you make the commitment to not work, as I did, you can do it.

Our travel plans have constantly evolved... essentially, we'll end up home 3 days after originally planned. Our flight from Athens to Paris took off without a hitch. After that, things got confusing. Our Paris to Houston flight was cancelled for two days. That left us in Paris for two nights. OK - not a bad place to be. On the day we were supposed to fly back to Houston, we found out our flight to Houston was cancelled again. We shifted to a flight to Newark (that included an overnight stay) with plans to then fly to San Antonio. Newark was fine (that's 3 unplanned nights in a hotel) but we later found out that getting a car in San Antonio to drive to Houston was impossible.

San Antonio was out so we worked with three ticket agents at the Continental ticket sales counter to then switch our flights from eTickets to paper tickets (I guess that's what they had to do to make the change) so that we could fly from Newark, via Nashville, back to Houston. The next day, when we went to check in, we were told that we essentially didn't have tickets on anything... Nashville, San Antonio, zilch. Hmmm... OK, not great. So, the agent started fixing the mess the last 3 agents had made. She worked over the phone with someone from Continental and actually found us seats on a direct flight from Newark to Houston - something we thought was virtually impossible. From what we know, flights should be taking off and landing in IAH so we should arrive back shortly after midnight on the 16th. Our original plan was to be back in Houston on the 12th. Juuuust a slight delay.

Wow... fun stuff. It's hard to keep sane but we made the best of it, enjoyed a bit of time in Paris and Roissy (more on that later) and tried to keep a sense of humor without strangling each other. Soon, I'll be able to post some pictures from the wonderful island of Milos and our stops in-between.