Triskaideka--what?

I don't know if the Catholics of Rome are superstitious, but I generally am not. So when SilentR and I booked our flight from Athens to Rome to be on Friday the 13th, I thought nothing of it. When we ran out of time to have one last Athenian lunch, I thought nothing of it. When we arrived at the Athens airport to find that our flight was delayed, I thought nothing of it.

But then SilentR mentioned the date.

    "Ooh, Friday the 13th!"

Then I thought a little about it.

When a heavily perspiring (and therefore, smelly) man chose the seat behind us on the plane, I thought a little about it. When we arrived in Rome to find that the Metro train line that we need to ride was down because a man had died, I thought a little about it.

When the lady on the bus kept SCREAMING AND RAGING in Italian for 25 minutes straight, I thought a little more about it. When the packed-like-sardines-bus ride took over an hour, I thought a little more about it. When the next bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, I thought a little more about it.

When we asked for directions three times without reaching our hotel, I definitely thought about it. When we finally found our place of lodging but then found the only supermarket nearby was closed at 7:30pm (5 minutes before we stepped in front of the automatic doors that didn't open), I definitely thought about it. And when we managed to select the most expensive restaurant for MILES and were seated while dressed like bums, well, by then I just gave up and gave in and went along for the ride.

Travelling on Friday the 13th, may have whooped our butts, but the food (and our perfectly shirted server) absolutely made up for it.

As it turns out, the tally wasn't THAT bad:

• Missed meal: still had time to snag a DELICIOUS piece of baklava

• Flight delay: only 30 minutes
• Perspiring man: only smellable when he moved
• Screaming lady: was finally told to shut up (I think) by a bellowing man--and everyone cheered when she finally got off the bus
• Train delay: well, that one hurt--what took us almost 3 hours by bus should have only been 20 minutes by train
• Bus ride to nowhere: actually everyone on board pitched in what English they had to get us off at the closest stop
• Bad directions: were actually accurate, we just didn't try hard enough to follow them all the way through
• Supermarket: I'd only wanted water and it turned out that the restaurant sold it really cheap
• Expensive restaurant (except for the water): worth every Euro

Sure, it'd been a HORRENDOUSLY long and tedious travel day that had us nearly throwing in the towel by the end of it, but after the water, the food, and the perfectly shirted service--no, really, the guy's shirt fit him perfectly--the walk back to camp (yes, we were staying at a campsite!) wasn't so daunting and our trailer (yes, we were staying in a trailer) actually seemed cozy.