“Travels to a Different Time” : 24July2000: Toronto, London and Athens: Welcome to Olympic Airline’s Lost Luggage Motel! Captain Little Bird Flying Big Plane

Up up and away on an ageing Air Canada 747. Rather cheap French wine to start and the usual Air Canada shenanigans with chicken or pasta but we are out of the chicken. Cannelloni was undercooked pig slop. Nodded off and up at 4 a.m. to daylight. Breakfast, if you can call it that, was a slice of stale date cake and processed fruit salad. Landed early morning at Heathrow and on a bus to the terminal Olympic Airways used. Flight to Athens delayed by 30 minutes and it was packed. The captain was Captain Poulaki which means little birdie. Little birdie flying a big plane! Stuffed vine leaves for lunch a very traditional Greek dish. Not sure what the correct time was when we landed. The Olympic crew neglected to tell us. The bags never came! We missed the connecting flight as many others did. To and fro in an exhausted state to get replacement tickets for a flight leaving next morning. Then another run around to get a chit to the magnificent Lost Luggage Hotel. Looks as if many others were suffering from Olympic Airlines lost luggage. Some mumbling about a mix up at Heathrow. Of we headed with others to Hotel Emmantina in an Athenian seaside suburb Glyfada. Dinner a la lost luggage was a green salad, pizza slice, chicken and potatoes, banana, ice cream. There was even some butter with the bread something you would not have seen 30 years ago on my first trip to Greece. Numbed out with jet lag crashed out.