Almost 15 years ago, after we were married in Florence, it took us 23 hours to get to Athens, Greece via ferry from Italy. We were cheap and almost broke and had to run to catch the last departing ferry boat/large ship. We paid the passage, only to learn they had no more cabins.
This was our honeymoon night.
We drank and talked in the small dining/bar area of the ship, meeting new people biding our time until everything closed down and the people who were lucky enough to get rooms went off to sleep in real beds.
We made our way around the ship looking for a place to sleep where A. no one was puking. B. it didn’t smell like diesel fuel or exhaust and C. we could both fit.
We ended up in the dark and deserted movie theater. The chairs were small and bolted down, but the rows between them were roomy enough and pretty clean. We laid our sheets on the floor, used our backpacks for pillows and reached through the legs of the seats to hold hands, promising ourselves that the real honeymoon would start when we disembarked at Naxxos.
Thing was, we were okay with this. To this day, I don’t know what it would have taken to get a cabin room. It might have been $100, which was – for us- 2 days worth of living expenses, and today, is something I piss away at Costco in the first 15 minutes. But at that time, the choice was the right thing and gave me a unique story, a MOMENT unlike anyone else’s. Something I will cherish forever and remember everytime I reach across the movie theater seat to hold my husband’s hand.