Bittersweet Good-Bye

Zara tank (similar)
Zara skirt (similar)
J. Crew sandals
Ellen James handbag
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Elizabeth Lyn Jewelry necklace (c/o)
& Other Stories necklace
Linjer rings (c/o)
Old Navy earrings (c/o Ivanhoe Cambridge)
Location: Stoa Tou Biblio – Athens, Greece

The end of a vacation is always bittersweet. After days of fun and festivity, it’s hard not to be happy, even if you know all the joyful adventuring is about to come to an end. The bittersweet nostalgia for a vacation just past had already started to take me over on the morning we captured these photos in Athens – it was our last before we had to leave. Technically, we still had a full day and night ahead of us. But jetlag was beginning to catch up with us, as was the combination of late nights and early mornings. We were a bit tired. But that didn’t mean we were ready to go home – just that we needed to recharge a little before getting back to enjoying ourselves.

Sadly, home was exactly where we were headed. And leaving Athens this time was much harder than on our first visit, when we were returning to our home in Paris. I’m always glad to get back to Paris. When home is in Canada, my enthusiasm for return wanes considerably. (The Canadian city we live in doesn’t matter, really – if I can’t be in Europe, I will never truly feel like I am where I belong. This is a fact that, at this age, I have simply come to accept.) Our departure was that much more bittersweet because we had such a wonderful adventure in Greece this year – we simply never wanted it to end, even though its end was inevitable from the start.

This isn’t quite good-bye to Athens. I’ve saved my favourite photos from our trip for last, and will share them, along with a companion to my original Athens Travel Guide, next week. We’ve been to New York since our return, so the truth is that I still have so much that I’m excited to share through the winter months when it’s too cold to actually take outfit photos. But that doesn’t make bidding farewell to Athens any less bittersweet. The Greek capital is one of the places that I feel happiest, and, perhaps more notably, most at peace.

That sentiment, however fleeting, is one that I always try hard to hold onto for as long as I can. I allude to the frantic pace of my work occasionally, but I will be explicit today and say that say that frantic is the best adjective to describe my professional life. Things happen – and I need to react to them – at break neck speed. At any given moment, you’re likely to find me drafting multiple emails while on a conference call with ten to twelve instant message windows blinking on my computer, all in need of my attention. The hours are long but there is still never enough time. Normal life activities like buying groceries and doing laundry often go undone for simple want of time. I haven’t seen the bottom of my to-do list for the better part of a year.

…needless to say, I need vacation time to recharge. But every holiday doesn’t bring peace. Travel can be seriously stressful. There are airports to navigate, linguistic misunderstandings to maneuvre and foreign currencies to master. Somehow, Athens just works. And that makes it a particularly special place for me – a place I would never hesitate to return.

Usually, by the time in the year, we have our next adventure planned. But right now, my travel calendar is completely blank, which makes letting go of our time in Athens all the more bittersweet. I don’t know what comes next, but I love where we’ve been so far.

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