May 24, 2007
THESSALONIKI, GREECE – – Today the Iowa women’s basketball team traveled 24 hours and finally reached its destination of Thessaloniki, Greece. The Hawkeyes had four flights en route to Greece. Iowa had three layovers, including one memorable one in Athens, in which junior-to-be Megan Skouby details in her blog.
Check out below as Skouby describes today’s events surrounding team activities. Be sure to check back tomorrow to read Lindsey Nyenhuis’ blog. The Hawkeyes are slated to spend the entire day tomorrow sightseeing the city of Thessaloniki.
As always, daily photo galleries and video postcards are being uploaded to hawkeyesports.com, so for maximum and exclusive coverage of the Hawkeye women’s trip to Greece click on Greece Central to follow the team’s adventures.
The audio and video clips are free, but all visitors to Hawkeye All-Access, the multi-media pages of hawkeyesports.com need to register.
Hey all you Hawk fans!
We left bright and early this morning. Our bus left Iowa City by 6:20 a.m. and our flight was scheduled to depart at 8:10. Thank goodness our airport is small and we only had to arrive about 45 minutes early to get through security. We boarded on time, but we sat on the tarmac for an hour!
We finally took off from Cedar Rapids at 9:15 a.m. I was a little worried about our flight connection in Chicago, but we ended up having a couple of spare minutes. I thought we would have a big plane going from Chicago to New York, but it was still a small regional jet. I did manage to get the very first seat so I could stretch my legs a little bit.
We all got rechecked at the international terminals and once we passed through security, we realized we should have bought food outside the terminal. It was all very expensive and very limited choices ($10 for seven wings!). I just had a hot dog and a pretzel. It wasn’t very satisfying at all. The plane served us a hot meal within an hour. I had the pasta dish, but it was only okay. I could only sleep for a half an hour on the plane, so I read, watched Happy Feet and Déjà vu, and walked around.
We reached Athens around 9 a.m. local time and then had a three hour layover. Things were very unorganized in the airport with so much chaos. The soccer fans from the huge Liverpool vs. AC Milan match were passed out everywhere in the airport and when it was time for their flight to leave there was much singing, chanting and celebration among the Milan fans, who had won the league championship… it was pretty crazy!
Things that would not pass in United States airports were ignored in Athens. We finally arrived in Thessaloniki around 3:30 p.m. local time, which is the capital of the North. I was exhausted so when we got back to the hotel I took a power nap before we left for dinner. We ate at a local restaurant, but took a taxi to get there. The cab driver taught us to say `thank you’ (pronounced efkhareesto). JoAnn, her family, Liz, Rich, and I decided to walk the boardwalk back to the hotel. It was a pretty site to be able to walk beside the water. I sure can’t wait to see what the rest of Greece offers!