Friday, 30 June 2016, Tallahassee to Heraklion
Written 3 July 2016
After many tries on previous trips, I finally got the flat-rate taxi fare between Westminster Oaks and the airport to work. Turns out you need to know the secret account number and use it to reserve the taxi in advance. The taxi showed up on time, and we allowed plenty of time at the airport, so as to have time to buy a lunch to eat on the plane to Atlanta, but then the flight was delayed, so we had plenty of time at the airport.
The airport's food service was recently revamped, and the new eatery is much better than the old. We used the delay to have excellent Reuben sandwiches, to purchase a new microbead neck pillow (to replace my old inflatable, which sprang its career-ending leak on our last overnight flight), and to fidget with worry that we were going to miss our connection in Atlanta.
As it happened, our flight finally took off about an hour late, and we made the connection, but just barely. We got to the gate in time to join the end of the boarding line; just one party boarded after us. We were afraid that would mean we would find no vacant overhead space and have to rest our feet on our carry-on bags all the way to Rome, but we were lucky. Delta reserves ample overhead space for the "economy comfort" class, and we were in the first row behind that section. Economy-comfort space was left over for us, and we could arrange our items at our leisure, as no one was pushing us from behind to get down the aisle!
The plane took off right on time, and I was more comfortable than usual on this flight—I wore soft knit trousers, brought along a pair of airline foot socks rather than doing the whole flight barefoot (I always take off my shoes and socks for long flights, and the airline blankets are seldom long enough to cover both my arms and my feet), brought along my fur-lined eye shade, and found the microbead pillow a vast improvement over its predecessor. The availability of a wide array of on-demand movies definitely makes the time go faster. I started by watching Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (sweetness, light, terrific dancing, and well-known songs), then, over dinner, Iron Man III (crash, bang, flaming chaos). Dinner wasn't bad—tiny shrimp cocktail, salad, stuffed chicken, corn, potatoes, and a brownie. I'll say it again, as I do every year— the single thing airlines could do that would most improve their in-flight meals is not to chill the bread!
After that, I tried sleeping a little and did manage to doze. Over breakfast (at about midnight, according to our internal clocks; Delta, that was the worse cup of tea I've ever had, and stop chilling the croissants!), I watched an episode of an Animal Planet TV series about building elaborate adult tree houses. The narration and dialog on that kind of show usually drive me nuts, so I watched it without sound and found it pretty interesting.