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The London to Athens tour was well-planned--from local visits to the cross-country connections. When I was awake long enough to join my fellow forty passengers, it was not hard to appreciate the logistical anticipation of the guides, drivers, the tour director himself: the whole operation.
Because they understood an essential thing about us.
Toilet habits.
Not realizing that tourists must defacate before ten a.m. could be the ruin of the company.
It's the tourist's only worry. The Acropolis, Sistene Chapel, the Louvre, the Tower of London would have dissolved in our memories had this basic need not been taken care of.
Ten o'clock. After that the game is in your ballpark. And to make life more difficult, the bathroom on our bus wasn't operational! What seemed not to make sense to most of the passengers made perfect sense to the Sardine. Most of my fellow tourists thought that the driver just didn't to clean it. There might've been some truth to that. But for the convenience of already unconscious tourists the toilet would have been used and used until the stink started to waft through the bus.
A breakfast with two or three hot cups of coffee or tea should start the process by 8:15 to 8:30. We usually got rolling by 9:00.
However, the human body being the blessed irritant that it is often responds tardily under time pressure. Nothing happens when it should and you're on the bus waiting to go--in both senses. The tour handlers, foreseeing a problem, always scheduled a stop an hour and a half into the drive. At locations that had clean W.C.'s.
Not beset by irregularity, or just abnormally blessed by the regularity gods, I still had much on my mind. While those around me worried about the cleanliness of the next public toilet or were searching for loose change to ward off the evil eye from toilet attendants, I worried about getting home to the United States!
Although I was cramped and sleepless, the flight from New York to London was only six-and-a-half hours. Besides, the tour company had picked me up at Heathrow. The Athens to New York return flight would be a nightmare. What would ten hours in the air do to me? And there were other factors:
1) Leaving at two p.m. from Athens, the plane would arrive in New York between six and seven p.m. Plenty of time to pick up the van for the two-hour ride home.
2) Except that the damn plane stopped in London for two or three hours. Which meant that everything had to go right for me to land, go through customs, get my luggage, call the van-limousine service. With no guarantee of getting a seat on the van.
3) Which meant worrying about getting to London on time for the connecting flight.
4) Which meant expecting punctuality from the people at the Athens International Airport who were more worried about stopping bombers from boarding their flights than my comfort of mind. Worse, the tour director said that he could only get tour bus driver to go to the airport at 8:30 A.M. Five hours waiting for a flight promised a sore back, “keester lock,” and inflamed knees.
I could have gone to the airport later and paid a forty dollar taxi fare.
Was there really a choice? I was assured of a twenty-four day without promise of much sleep. With the prospect of not being able to escape New York City when I returned. And only fifty dollars left in traveler's checks. I would probably have to sleep at JFK airport!
I was consumed by anxiety on the third day before we've boarded the ferry at Dover! Too irritated to fight the crowds in the Louvre to get near the Mona Lisa!! What did I care about the Renaissance paintings in the Uffizi, St. Peter's Basilica, Raphael paintings in the Vatican apartments?
In a week or so I would be feeling dreadful. Trapped on a plane on a Heathrow runway or in JFK lounge watching for someone to steal my loose luggage.
I would have traded these thoughts for three days' constipation.
But even I tired of these thoughts of future abuses when we had reached Rome. I went with the tour group to the Tivoli Gardens before eating at a restaurant on the side of a mountain and had the best time there during this trip.
Indeed, not too long later, on the overnight trip from Rome to Patras, Greece, via the port of Brindisi, despite having two full days in the Peloponnese and Athens, I started planning my next overseas trip.
Maybe not a tour. A week in the Canary Islands. I had seen a brochure at my travel agency: $800 total for a week at decent hotel. That was it! Stay in one place.
And while I would be in the Canaries, I could line up a two week trip to Spain (a few years down the line) stopping each night at their magnificent inns called Paradors. The Spanish government ran luxurious hotels adapted from old monasteries and castles. A car was included in the package deal--with a side trip to Portugal.
And I had always wanted to cruise the Aegean isles for several months: Crete, Thera, Rhodes, Paros, Chios, Kos, Patmos, all the way to the peninsula where the Mt. Athos monasteries were located.
All depending on the outcome of my trial. Another bit of worry. I might be going nowhere. A Sardine truly in the can!
Then I heard a woman on this tour who worked for a travel agency say that she specialized in tours strictly to pilgrimage sites. Lourdes, Fatima, Metagora. Maybe that's the one I should have taken this time abroad.
Or I should take the pilgrimage tour next time in gratitude for being regular and not having had even the hint of a bathroom emergency?
The Sardine's essays, articles, and stories have appeared around the Internet in the last few years at 3 A.M., Facets, Eclectica magazine, Fiction Funhouse, The Fiction Warehouse, 5_trope, and several film journals. Who and what he is probably will be revealed at various points through the articles appearing at this site. The first fifteen installments of his saga can be viewed at the old Unlikely Stories.