It started when I read an article about Red Tractor Farm – what a name! The article said that it was “a working farm that produces organic wines, preserves, and acorn cookies. Whitewashed cottages lie among vineyards and olive groves. Room have their own entrance and veranda”.
The farm is on the unheard of (to us at least) Greek island of Kea, a one hour ferry ride from Athens.
It sounded amazing. An ideal location to relax and enjoy a much needed break.
I got in touch with Marcie, one of the owners. Very friendly, very helpful, and yes, they had a vacancy for the week we were interested in.
We decided to go. However, arranging the flights was not simple as I’d hoped. The best we could do was arrive in Athens at 20:20. I contacted Marcie to ask how we should get from Athens airport to the dock, only to find that the last ferry was at 17:00.
So we had to stay on the mainland for one night and cross to Kea the next day.
When we arrived on Kea, though, the farm was perfect. The cottage was spacious, cool inside with nice rooms (although we later discovered that one of them had once been the pig sty). We had an amazing week.
But it had been frustrating that we couldn’t go there straight from the airport. We had to book a hotel on the mainland, a taxi, a restaurant for that evening. That’s the price you pay for doing it all yourself. A lot of work, a lot of Googling, a lot of time – and we still didn’t get it quite right.
We didn’t do anything wrong. We just didn’t know.
Not knowing isn’t a crime, but it would have been quicker, easier and ultimately more efficient to use someone whose day job is arranging travel. Like maybe a “travel agent”.
At Tiger Computing, we have people whose day job is building cloud systems. If that’s not your day job, you may find it quicker, easier and ultimately more efficient to use our people to manage your cloud infrastructure rather than doing it yourself.
And you haven’t missed the boat. We’re still here.