Travel does not treat everyone equally.

Starting with something delicious, but quite in the middle of our day, we had a nice little meal while waiting for our ferry at Rafina port in Greece. Gianna and Lisa both got fried Aegean shrimp. I got the burger, which came sans bun and was like the most fantastic homemade Italian meatballs I've ever had (yes I know Greece and Italy are different places). Had I known how good the fried seafood was, I think I'd have ordered that, but luckily Gianna didn't finish all her food (and thus has less fuel for her seasickness). So, I got to snack on absolutely delicious fried head-on shrimp. They're like perfect french fries, but fantastically better.

If you don't know by now, two of us on the trip don't handle planes so well. The plane wasn't the problem, but the high-speed ferry produces no less than 5 liters of vomit (10 bags in total) across three pathetic young women. I was fine; I very rarely get motion sickness.

While it was difficult to watch, I did my part to make everyone's responsibilities a bit easier. Of course, I took a picture for posterity. Michelle, Gianna and Tori popped; Zoe faired poorly but didn't expel her innards; Lisa, miraculously, wasn't overly affected. Somewhat amusingly, hours later when we were turning in for the evening, Lisa complained of the world still rocking to and fro: delayed effect.

We hit the first snag with our Star Alliance around-the-world-tickets. Somehow the Aegean airline leg had no baggage allowance. I have no idea how one is suppose to really go around the world with a single 8kg carry-on. Me being Gold, I got my pack on for free, but I ended up having to pay 80€ in baggage fees for two of the other bags and a lot of indignation bought me a carry-on allowance covering the other three. That's 80€ of bullshit if you ask me. ZERO BAGS? Trying to correct with 1K services over the phone found me disconnected after 40 minutes. Good thing I've got a lot of patience.

Today we traveled from Istanbul, Turkey to Paros, Greece. It was filled with adventure, beautiful sites and an ungodly volume of vomit. All in and all done, everyone had good spirits at the end; I'm surprised and genuinely impressed. It involved miles of walking, a tram, a metro, a plane, some taxies, a ferry and a rental car. A little over 14 hours puts this trip just a tad longer than the initial hop from home to our hotel in Istanbul.

The day ended here in our Paros beach house, with this view from our porch (30m from the water)... can't complain.