A Moment In Time

When did the pandemic end? No, not for unserious horse-paste advocates, but when did it end in reality? It certainly didn’t end on any specific date and hey, for some people it still hasn’t. Nevertheless, the new reality that slowly crept into travel planning… repeat PCR tests, laminated vax cards to eat/sleep/travel… has dissipated with hardly a trace. When we took this Greece trip in late 2021, we couldn’t have known that this would be our final pandemic trip. As I write this belated entry, it almost seems quaint recalling the time. The health emergency had passed but we were all still going through the motions of public health theater. Real travel difficulties had also passed… places were open again and no more constant nasal swabs at least. Now, we carried around vax cards slipped into our passports for access to the world of the living. We’re talking just about anything: shops, restaurants, hotels, museums, etc. An interesting quirk at this time was that the locals showed their vaccinated status with a QR code in an app. For tourists, you were supposed to present your passport and vax card. In practice, many smaller shops and restaurants would still turn you away if you didn’t have the QR code. The uncertainty risk trumped the benefits of you as a customer. It seems that code enforcement would patrol these places trying to get access and would levy very large fines if your business violated the requirements.

Covid aside, another big factor in our experience for this trip was the time of year: we were visiting firmly in the off-season, particularly for Mykonos. While I’m sure there’s a ton of appeal that we missed versus a typical summer trip, the pristine beauty of the place absent crowds was also really appealing. This trip was also a bit of an “engagement” trip along with my wife Shobana. Great food and a very relaxing trip.