It was with heavy hearts that we bid farewell to the sunny days and blue waters of the Island of the Winds. We all would have liked to stay for eternity, but the girls had to catch a flight out of Northern Greece, and I was set on visiting Meteora, as well as hiking Mt. Olympus, the home of the gods. I was, however, quite forlorn that we had to leave our good friends behind. 😥
Since the island is fairly far by ferry (as you may briefly recall), this meant the day was primarily a travel day. The operative plan was for us to go directly to the car rental agency, where we would hop in our vehicle, and arrive at Meteora by dinner time.
Unfortunately, the ATV rental service on the island had required the driver’s licenses as a deposit. And either they forgot to return the documentation when we turned in the vehicles, or the girls forgot to double-check that they had been received.
Lo and Behold! We arrive at the car rental agency to discover that C and B didn’t have their licenses. As they were both over 25, they were the only two eligible for the mid-size rental we had booked. Unfortunately due to government restrictions, we were not allowed to rent the car we wanted, and the only cars allowed for those under 25 (incl. me) were compact, manual cars.
This basically left us stranded, as I never had the opportunity to learn how to drive a stick-shift. Fortunately (or in apologetic compensation), the ATV company was kind enough to hand the licenses over to a ferry crew member, who would meet us back at the port when the earliest ferry got in the following morning.
In the end, we stayed in Athens at a hostel for the night. As you can imagine, I was not very pleased, since I knew this would completely skew the tightly scheduled plans we had arranged for the next 3 days :(.
CestLaJu 