On our last night in Athens, our EF GoAhead tour group took one final group picture before walking across the street for our farewell dinner. I must say that this was really a nice bunch of people and we seemed to get along well.

Someone asked how we liked the food, and I responded that I hadn’t eaten so much meat in such a short time! Ham, sausages, souvlaki (meat on skewers), moussaka (eggplant with minced meat), umpteen Greek salads (but they were really, really fresh!), eggplant at almost every meal, and of course many sweets such as baklava, cookies and candy. I’m sure that I gained at least five pounds on this trip, since we had three huge meals every single day. You might think that all we did was eat on this trip!

On this day of our return to Honolulu, my alarm clock was set for 4:00 am but I was wide awake at 2:00 am and never really went back to sleep. Our tour director, Christina, was waiting in the lobby to give us our breakfast boxes and a last-minute gift and hug before our driver took us to the airport. She had also said goodbye to my cousin Amy and her husband, Tike, before they left for the airport at 2:30 am!

Bill Potter and I arrived at the airport at 5:00 am, exactly two hours before our flight to Frankfurt, where we had a two-hour layover, then on to Denver for another two-hour layover, before finally arriving at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu around 8:00 pm. That means that it took us about 28 hours from Athens to Honolulu and we had spent approximately 19 hours in the air.

It’s now 3:30 am Honolulu time and I haven’t gone to sleep yet. I unpacked my suitcase and prepared all my music for Sunday and deliberately chose music that wouldn’t require a lot of practice — but my work is still cut out for me because there are many special services in the next couple of weeks.

I am also playing in the next Early Music Hawaii concert on May 18th, called “Rome 1600: The Glories of the Italian Baroque,” for which nearly all of the music is new to me.

Back to the salt mines for me!