*This post is a story of our experience flying to Greece in May, 2021. It does not reflect the current entry requirements for Greece and is not intended to serve as a guide, but rather a personal anecdote.
Getting to Greece in 2021
Greece is a country I have always wanted to visit. Maybe it was from reading Greek myths when I was a kid or watching Mamma Mia, but something about Greece has always drawn me in. Ben and I finally decided to make Greece happen, and booked a trip for 2020…only to have it get cancelled due to the pandemic. Sad day.
When I rebooked our trip for the summer of 2021, Greece was still closed to foreign tourists. But I am ever the optimist and waited with eager expectation that the country would open up, and we would be able to visit. We were vaccinated against Covid-19 in March, and then Greece threw its doors open in May, just two weeks before our trip!
I was ecstatic to be able to visit Greece, and truthfully, we could not have gone at a better time. Because we visited early in the summer when travel hadn’t quite picked back up yet, it felt like we had the country all to ourselves. There were no crowds anywhere, which made all the stress of planning a trip during the pandemic 100% worth it!
Arriving in Greece was a little dramatic. Our flight schedule had already changed about ten times before our day of departure. Then, when we were finally on our way, we ran into some major hiccups. Our route was from Albuquerque to Atlanta to Paris to Athens, but in Atlanta, we sat on the plane on the tarmac for over an hour waiting for cutlery of all things. This caused us to miss our connection in Paris. Delta immediately rebooked us… but… they booked us on two different flights, so that we would arrive in Greece at different times.
Normally, this would be annoying, but not that big a deal. However, because we were traveling during the pandemic, we needed a passenger locater form to enter Greece. We were only supposed to fill out one form for the both of us, and we would need to have it scanned when we entered Greece. This becomes a problem if we do not enter the country at the same time…
So we embarked on an airport adventure. Stop one was the Air France help desk, since our new flights to Athens were operated by Air France. Well, the person at the counter was not very nice (or very helpful) and told us that she couldn’t rebook us because Delta had sold us the ticket, and to get it changed, we would need to go to the Delta help desk in the departures area.
Again, this would normally not be an issue. We’d hop out to the departures area, get our flights fixed. No problem. But in May 2021, American tourists were not allowed to enter France. So we could not get to the Delta help desk in the departures area. We could not leave the gate area.
So stop two was immigration, where we explained to the guards that we were not actually trying to go to France. We just needed to get to the Delta help desk in the departures area. They said, “Oh, you don’t need to go this way, you need to go down the hall to this other help desk.”
So stop three was down the hall at the general airport help desk, where, you guessed it, they told us they could not help us, and we would need to talk to the Delta help desk in the departures area.
So stop four was back at immigration, where we explained that we needed to go to the departures area, that they could not help us at the other help desk, and that we were not actually trying to go to France. Thankfully, they let us through. We headed to the departures are and (drum roll please)….
There’s no Delta help desk! Where there should be a Delta help desk, there is instead a Covid testing information center.
So stop five is the Delta counter (where there are no people to help us) followed shortly by the Air France counter (where no one is able to help us). I probably would have just called Delta by now and tried to get it fixed over the phone, but I knew from the previous ten times our flight had been changed that I would be stuck on hold for at least several hours if I managed to get through at all. Not a reasonable option. Finally, we found someone who informed us that there was no longer a Delta help desk in the departures are (thanks, got that one figured out already) and we would need to go to the Air France help desk in the gate area.
So stop six was the Air France help desk. The same help desk that we started at. Before the ridiculous two-hour journey through the airport. But thankfully, this time, a very nice, accommodating person helped us. She rebooked our flight no problem so we could fly together and actually arrive in Greece together. (Thank you, Air France angel!) I don’t know why the first person we talked to was so determined she couldn’t help us, but I guess that’s life.
Anyway, after a long, long, long day of flying, we finally made it to Athens a little before midnight. It was an adventure, but that’s part of the fun of travel. What came next was one of our best trips yet!
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