Two Tickets to Paradise? Our Accidental Vacation From Vacation

When the ferry leaves the harbor and the universe makes other plans.

Me on the eternal steps of Fournoi, halfway between enlightenment and cardiac arrest.

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Continued from Part 1…click here if you missed it.

We drop our luggage into the room, which, if you recall, was last updated sometime during the Peloponnesian War, and sit on the edge of the ancient bed, contemplating our life choices. There are no more ferries to Ikaria until morning. No one at the port knows any captains who’d take us across the 20-minute stretch of sea separating us from our intended destination.

So we do the next best thing and our only real option: we buy catamaran tickets for the morning and console ourselves with the thought that things could be worse.

We wander around the island to kill time. The main street is lined with a few restaurants and shops, all seemingly run by the same three people. It’s charming in a “blink and you’ve seen it” kind of way.

We spend most of the day talking about how stupid we were. I try to soften the blow with my friend’s immortal words: “Travel is an adventure.” But at this point, it’s feeling less Eat, Pray, Love and more Trapped, Complain, Sulk.

That night, just as we’re convincing ourselves that things are looking up, we get a text: our morning catamaran has been canceled due to high winds.

Of course it has.

I’m now starting to believe the universe read my Substack and wanted to give me material.

The next morning, we are on a mission: find someone, anyone, with a boat to Ikaria. We ask the coast guard if there’s a local captain who could take us.

“No boats today,” he says. “Too dangerous.”

The next ferry to Ikaria, he adds, is two days away—if the winds behave. (They will not.)

Ikaria taunts us from across the water, close enough to see, too far to reach.

Rather than spend another night on this island, we pivot. We decide to take the 11:45 p.m. ferry back to Samos. That’s right—back to where this all began. We’d been so excited to visit Ikaria, but instead, we became boomerangs — launched toward adventure, only to end up right back where we started.

With hours to kill, we decide to visit a nearby beach. A woman in a mud-splattered van agrees to drive us. My husband’s Greek is enthusiastic but unreliable, so we’re not entirely sure where we’re going. She drops us off at the edge of a cliff, points vaguely downward to a set of stairs, and drives away.

Down we go.

And down.

And down.

After approximately 4,000 stairs (give or take one coronary event), we reach Kampi Beach—a beautiful stretch of sand occupied solely by retirees in Speedos, a topless grandma, and one very tired taverna.

The waiter greets us warmly and lists off today’s fish. “Could we see a menu?” my husband asks.

“You can,” the waiter says, “but we don’t have anything on it.”

A man after my own heart.

We order salads and some Greek meatballs, enjoy the view, feed the cats our leftovers, and ask our waiter to call us a cab for the return trip. He tells us to leave “that way,”pointing toward another staircase, as if we haven’t already closed our exercise ring for eternity.

Halfway up, I start questioning all my life decisions, including but not limited to: marriage, travel, and stairs as a concept. We finally reach the top, breathless but triumphant. Surely, the worst is behind us.

Moments later, we receive a text: our 11:45 p.m. ferry back to Samos has been postponed until 8:30 a.m. the next day.

At this point, Fournoi feels less like an island and more like a karmic detention center. We had already relocated to a more modern hotel—“modern” meaning the room is cheerful and has lightbulbs that work—and surrender to our fate.

The next morning, forty-five minutes behind schedule (because of course), the ferry finally arrives. We board as if fleeing captivity. Back to Samos we go, where we will catch our flight to Athens, and two day later our flight home.

We never made it to Ikaria—the island where people forget to die—but after Fournoi, I understand why they might want to.

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Have you ever been stranded somewhere unexpected? What did you do? (And did it smell faintly of mildew?) Share your story in the comments!