Flying SFO to Athens with an upgrade to first class! Woohoo! We get a chance to see how the other half lives (those who don’t usually travel sardine class as we do).
First class United menu means 5 courses. Essentially they feed, wine and salt you for two hours into a stupor. When my guy calls over to my pod: “look at my hot nuts,”I’m thinking we will be outed to back of the plane in short order. Following said nuts came salty soup, salty salad and salty mains. All capped off with melted ice cream sundaes. We were not impressed with the fare and we weren’t even paying.

Post dinner, our hostess converted our pod to a real bed with a soft coverlet. Now were impressed. I imagine sleeping like a baby on this transatlantic trip. But no. The cabin was kept too warm. Our bellies are too full and our Ambien pill has clearly passed its due date. Sleep …Not so much.

Of course there is a reason I’m boring you with our traveling sleep tale. We arrive in Athens late the next day. We proudly navigated the metro and exhaustedly dragged our bags up the steep hill only to find ourselves at an address that’s clearly a mattress store! Cocomat Hotel turns out to be a retail bedding store hiding a boutique hotel in plain sight.

They take us to our designated room. It’s chicly furnished with a double bed combo plushly outfitted in linens and pillows. But there was no view except for an air shaft. A small one. They then took us to room number two. It had a luxurious king size bed calling our name. But it had no better view just a bigger airshaft. Sigh!

The patient hotelier finally took us to room number three. It had a lush queen size bed. And it had a window facing the treelined street. It even had a little balcony. Talk about upgrades and extras. The gods of Olympus were smiling on us mere mortals. Or in a more modern analogy, Goldilocks and the three beds had scored.This room was JUST RIGHT!

That night, we ate a delicious dinner of grilled fish for me and moussaka for him at Oroscopo plus many extra treats from our generous host. And then, at long last, we finally settled into bed. Our magic bed in the store cum hotel.

 Maybe we are sleeping in a high class mattress store. Maybe we always dreamed of actually sleeping in a mattress store. No matter. The bed was fantastic and our weary heads did not arise till 9:30 am the next day with no aches in sight. We are ready to rock the Acropolis!

The plane pod, the mattress store aka hotel, our just right room