There are lots of reasons people go on holiday. Mine is because we found a business class flight to South Africa for cheaper than economy. I've never flown business class, but most airlines make you walk through business class on your way to your middle-aisle-middle-seat right over the wing. So I know what I've been missing.
It was with Saudi Air and stops in Jeddah. I was hoping for a long enough stopover that we could leave the airport, because realistically when am I ever going to be in Jeddah? But it's only 6 hours, which is just long enough to be far too long in an airport.
The other caveat was that it only goes from Athens, where we definitely don't live. And to get to Athens on time, we either had to arrive 2 hours before our flight (dodgy, if you're not with the same airline, and Saudi Air don't yet operate a flight from Edinburgh to Athens), or 3 days before our flight. 3 days is a bit much in an airport, but adequate for looking around Athens.
This was all booked in advance for March, then obviously Coronavirus happened. After many arguments about whether or not to cancel the whole thing, Dan won. So we're now in Athens.
This is the rather odd itinerary:
Athens for 3 days. Fly via Jeddah to Johannesberg. Drive straight to Kruger Park. Hang around there for a bit. Hopefully see an elephant. Go to Port Elizabeth and drive up the garden route for a few days to Cape Town. Then after 4 days in Cape Town we ended up with this weird thing where we'd have 2 days left, which is too short to go somewhere else in Africa. So we checked to see where we could fly through on our way home (again, this was all pre-Coronavirus). So we stop in Istanbul for 2 nights.
I've been endlessly reassured by everyone I've talked to that I'm definitely going to die on this trip. We'll be carjacked in South Africa, then eaten by a lion, then I'll get Coronavirus. Then, to make it worse, because I probably got the virus in Greece, I'll give it to the lion which is tantamount to poaching. And I'd hate that because I'm a vegetarian.