– Two Weeks in Olympic Beach –
It was Ela’s idea; a two-week vacation in Greece bracketed by road trips through Central Europe.
“We can drive through Serbia,” she said… as though that was something to get excited about.
“Is it safe?” I asked.
And she laughed.
Olympic Beach
We booked a couple weeks in an apartment suite a block off the water near the town of Paralia. Every few days, we went on an excursion; a day trip in a double-decker Mercedes coach to one of the many fascinating historical sites in the area. Fly Travel organized excursions with guides for every language group in that part of Europe. On our trips, there was a guide speaking for Serbians, another for Romanians, & one for Poles. We rode together on one big bus but broke up into our language groups when we arrived at the sites. Ela and I went with Fly Travel to the monasteries at Meteora.
and to the trailhead on Mount Olympus.
But those were the only two days during our two-week stay that we were not on the beach.
Greek Beach Life
We walked every evening to Paralia… a larger town up the coast three kilometres from where we stayed in Olympic Beach. The streets of both towns were quiet during the afternoon while people waited inside for the hottest part of the day to pass. By seven, it was cool enough to find a place to eat. After dinner, we spent our evenings walking the beach road between the two towns.
Surprisingly, the longest-lasting memories of the vacation were made during the road trip from Poland to Greece.
Road Trip
I was comfortable driving in Europe but had no experience outside of Poland, so we bought a GPS for the car. I sat outside the house in Strzelin for a long time trying to find our hotels in Hungary and Olympic Beach. For some reason, neither the names nor addresses worked to locate the destinations. However, both hotels listed their navigation coordinates on their websites. I saved those numbers into my GPS device and named them accordingly. Then I confirmed our reservations a week ahead of time. We set off on May 25th 2024 for the first long road trip of our couplehood.
The first day set the tone for the entire trip. We had a great time; lots of conversation, good laughs, and a clean break from our daily routines. Driving lesser highways, we slipped through the mountains of the Czech Republic, rolled along the Slovakian border for an hour, then found a high-speed modern highway for the rest of the day. We booked a night at a family-run hotel and restaurant located five kilometres inside the Schengen Zone border in Hungary.
Distracted
We slept well, but a pinched nerve in my right shoulder had been a persistent distraction. And since I can only sleep on my right side, the shoulder was extra sore in the morning. I took two APAP before carrying our bags to the car and returning to accompany Ela to breakfast. We gathered our favorite foods from the buffet and sat our purses on the chairs next to us at the table.
I didn’t have a purse, but a small shoulder bag for men; the kind you see carried by many men in Europe. Not much bigger than the cell phone it protected in the pocket next to the passports pocket, on top of which rode the wallet pocket; it was a small bag of pockets with a strap that was ideal for carrying all of one’s important documents while traveling. Because the bag contained all those things, it weighed heavy on my pinched shoulder. I looped it over my chair to relieve the pain in my neck while I ate.
Disaster
We were two kilometres down the road at the gas station on the roundabout when I realized the bag was not on my neck anymore. I reached for my man purse for money to buy gas but it wasn’t there. Electric fear shocked me time and time again as I realized all the terrible things that were happening right then.
“The bag is gone? I don’t know… OMG on my CHAIR! At the restaurant back down the road.”
Physical shock of realization.
“My money. My credit cards, too. And my passport.”
Dreadful premonition…
“And Ela’s passport!”
And the phone I’d need to report all that missing stuff and to stop spending on those cards… the phone was missing, too.
A Forever Memory
I was overwhelmed by my own stupidity, painfully aware of the price idiots like me justifiably pay for their mistakes. I readied myself for the worst as I put the little red Renault in gear and floored it. Ela was impressively calm as I drove like a madman back to the hotel, leapt from the car, and jumped the fence to race across the open patio into the restaurant.
The matriarch who presided over the dining room stood by the kitchen door next to a larger woman with hands on hips… the cook, most likely. They were probably discussing the brainless American who left his documents at Table #7. They looked at me when I burst in from the patio. Neither of them spoke a word nor did they react in any perceivable way, though both of them looked right into my eyes. I looked at them sheepishly, but happy because I knew immediately that my bag was hanging where I left it.
Two men seated at the back and one across from my table began laughing out loud when I looked their way, celebrating my idiocy. I laughed, too; it was a vacation-saving miracle. I didn’t bother checking the contents of the bag, but slung it over my shoulder and thanked everyone profusely on my way back to the car.
Just Part of the Adventure
Ela was pretty easy on me, all things considered. I committed an atrocious traveling sin at the beginning of our trip and was lucky… simply lucky and blessed by God that my stuff was still hanging on the chair. She teased me and we laughed, and we were in a good mood when we got to the border crossing.
We drove up to the window, handed the Hungarian inspector our passports, and drove ahead to the Serbian inspector to repeat the process. Our documents were stamped and we were waved through in less than five minutes, and felt virtually alone on the expressway a few minutes later.
Most of the second day of our road trip was spent cruising through the mountains in the southern part of Serbia and throughout the neighboring country of Macedonia. Red-tiled roofed villages were scattered in the hillsides; not clumped up in the valleys, but nestled comfortably high in the surprisingly green mountains along the way.
South through Serbia
It was a long day, and the road got narrower and dustier when we got to Greece. I drove the last hour around Thessaloniki through traffic chasing the coordinates I entered until the GPS guide informed us that our destination was ahead on the left.
After 9 hours driving we should have been excited.. at least happy. I would have been a little happier if we’d been in a city when the GPS announced our arrival… or close to a beach… or anywhere other than an empty field between houses scattered on a rural hillside the other side of Thessaloniki. Clearly NOT the Ammos Beach Luxury Suites.
“This doesn’t look familiar,” Ela said.
“The coordinates,” I thought out loud. “I entered the wrong coordinates!”
The Long Way
I went through the GPS devise menu and searched for Ammos Beach on Olympic Beach near Katerini… the same search I performed back in Strzelin. Perhaps because I was in Greece, the search was quick to respond with the address and directions to the hotel. I was relieved but saddened to learn that it was on the other side of Thessaloniki… the other side of the bay.
“I didn’t remember going through the city when we came here with Wojtek,” Ela said. She said the same thing earlier when I drove through traffic in the city, but I didn’t hear her. Or maybe I didn’t listen to her. It was the same result, though; we had to drive back through the busy city and down the coast before we could rest. It took almost two hours and felt like a disaster.
It wasn’t, of course. It was the beginning of a great adventure. We made it to our hotel at Olympic Beach, found the White Rose restaurant for dinner, and slipped into a vacation groove that made our time together in Greece a valuable memory. But since we’ve been home, I’ve noticed that Ela’s favorite stories to tell her friends are about me leaving my man purse on the chair in the hotel and following my GPS to the middle of nowhere!