A/N – See told you it wouldn't be long! Thanks for the great response. Here you go.

I do not own.

Five Weeks Later

All my plans hadn't worked. I had pretended to be sick, to not have a passport, that time of the month anything and everything but she was not to be deterred. So here we sat on a plane heading to Greece. To be honest I was excited even if Renee was already attracting attention with her outfit. I mean I suppose that in Florida hot pink was still a popular color but not so much when you were flying out of Seattle Airport. As the plane began taxing down the runway I opened up my magazine and prepared for the hours that I had ahead of me.

Thankfully Renee was capable of sleeping virtually anywhere so within minutes she was snoring lightly against my shoulder and I was able to read uninterrupted for the next few hours. Suddenly she jerked awake and I was subjected for the next few hours to unsolicited Renee commentary. She filled me in on everything that I had missed while living with Charlie. I stopped her just short of sharing information regarding her sex life with Phil. Everyone had to have their limits and that was definitely mine. I didn't need to know why Thursday was circus night at their house.

She decided to spend our last hour trying to convince me to attend FSU despite the fact that I was starting in three weeks at Dartmouth. She was convinced that even though I hadn't applied at FSU that if I showed up on the first day and they saw me that there was no way that they would be able to refuse me. As far as she was concerned no one in their right mind could refuse me. It was painfully obvious that my mother had never applied to or gone to college.

Finally after telling my mother that I would not be attending FSU for what had to be the 50th time we began our descent into Athens International Airport. I had spent all my energy trying to avoid this trip that I hadn't spent a lot of time investigating the details behind it. This meant that my mom had planned everything and suddenly I began to panic and hoped that we actually had a place to sleep before our bus tour began tomorrow. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the night in the airport.

"Mom, where exactly are we staying tonight?" I tried to keep my voice from betraying my dread.

"Well I looked on the internet for a HoJo but didn't have any luck so I decided that my baby girl only graduates from high school once and I was going to go all out," she smiled at me. She had effectively not answered my question. What did this mean? Had she found a Best Western, a Holiday Inn?

"Well great Mom. So what did you find," please, please let us actually be staying in a hotel and not some youth hostel that she found or better yet some friend she met online who was going to let us stay at their house. I wanted to actually make it home alive.

"Don't look so worried Bella. We are staying at The Grand Bretagne Hotel, nothing but the best for my little girl," I had no idea what my mother's idea of the best was but anything with the name Grand in it couldn't be too bad. Plus it appeared that someone was standing there with a sign with my mother's name on it to take us to the hotel. Things were definitely looking up.

It was a short drive from the airport to the hotel and when we got there I wasn't prepared for what met my eyes. It was nothing short of amazing. The imposing white building seemed to take up the whole block. While we were waiting for our luggage to be unloaded I stood in front of the hotel and looked up at what seemed like endless rows of windows. Words couldn't describe how awe inspiring it was. When we entered the lobby I stood just looking around at the understated decorations while my mother checked in. To say that I felt out of place would be putting it mildly but for once I decided to just not care and enjoy the moment. Sometimes I envied my mother, she had the ability to be at ease in any situation, it wasn't that she didn't care I just don't think she was aware half the time.

I watched people passing by as I waited for Renee to check in. Everyone's lives seemed far more exciting than my own as they rushed off for the places they needed to be. Soon though I would be at college and things would be different there. I wouldn't be known as clumsy Bella Swan, the police chief's bumbling daughter. It was time for a fresh start and I couldn't wait. Well there was no place like a foreign country to begin the reinvention.

When we got to our room I walked around and checked out everything. The deep blue/green carpet reminded me of the color of the ocean as we had flown in. The white comforter gave the room a clean and fresh feeling. I stepped over to the open windows and admired the view from our room. I could actually see the Acropolis from our bedroom. I wanted nothing more than to explore the hotel and its surroundings but it was 11am and we had been traveling all night and I was exhausted. I walked back into the living room and found Renee passed out on the couch so I headed back into the bedroom and fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up to the sight of Renee hovering over me.

"Can I help you mom?" The sunlight was streaming into the room hurting my eyes after what must have been only a few hours of sleep.

"Wake up Sleeping Beauty. We didn't come all this way to sleep. Let's go walk around and explore before dinner tonight." I pushed her away from me and got out of bed to get ready. She was right. We were sitting here in the middle of Greece, I shouldn't be sleeping. Tomorrow our 3 day bus trip started so we wouldn't be able to explore Athens again until after we returned.

Within a few minutes we were outside in the warm sun not sure which direction to head. The Parthenon was only 1 kilometer away and so we decided to head in that direction. We spent the day walking around the ancient grounds and playing tourist. It was amazing to be standing in a place with so much history. We couldn't take enough pictures and my mother didn't hesitate to stop any person within her reach to take our picture. I'm sure that in every one of those pictures my face was bright red due to the fact that my mother would just basically grab someone by their shirt and thrust a camera into their hand. Despite that, I can honestly say that it was one of the best afternoons that I have ever spent with my mother. When we weren't surrounded by people that we knew my mother's antics didn't seem nearly as bad.

As we walked back down the street to our hotel we were both exhausted but my mother insisted that we go out to dinner before we settled in for the night. She had a gleam in her eye as she said these words and I knew that she was up to something but I decided to just enjoy it. This trip was about enjoying ourselves and I was going to do just that.

My mother insisted that we dress nice for dinner. We walked down the hallway and got into the elevator. I was about to press the down button when Renee pushed my hand out of the way and pressed the button for the top floor. When we stepped off the elevator the view took my breath away. The Acropolis was lit up against the night sky and it looked like I could almost reach out and touch it.

We were led to a table at the edge of the dining room and I immediately noticed that we stood out. The room was filled mainly with couples but as usual my mom was at ease. There appeared to only be one couple that was around my age. They stood out in the room of mere mortals. She was petite but her skin almost glowed she was so fare. Her ink black hair set off her complexion perfectly instead of making her appear washed out. Then I turned my attention to him. It was proper that we were in Greece since he looked like a Greek god with his chiseled face. His jaw bone looked like you could have taken a protractor to it and actually figured out the angle. My mother noticed me staring and swung her body around to see what I was looking at.

How to put this nicely? Well discretion has never been a particular strong suit of my mothers. After she swung her body around she said loudly enough to earn us a few stares.

"Wow Bella, he is hot. Do you want me to invite him to eat with us?" She was standing up before I managed to stop her.

"Mom, NO," the couples around the room were laughing at my mother. I was used to this so it didn't even faze me. But then I looked briefly back at the couple that had originally caught my attention. He was staring at us with a perplexed look on his face while his date was smiling in our direction. With a simple shake of his head he turned his attention back to her and effectively dismissed me.

I sat back down at the table and ignored the heat on my face. I was determined to shake this off and enjoy the rest of my dinner. After all we were in a foreign country and we were leaving tomorrow morning on a bus trip so there would be no more chances to embarrass myself around him. I focused my attention to my mother and we ordered our dinner and talked while we waited for it to arrive.

Everything was going great when halfway through dinner she grabbed my hand. Her eyes were filled with tears.

"Bella, it's hard for me to believe that you are going away to college soon. I've thought of you as grown up for so long that it is hard to believe that it has actually happened. I just want you to know that I am proud of you. I wanted this trip to be our one last little hooray," she had gotten progressively louder as her speech had gone on once again garnering the attention of the dining room around us. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the young couple watching us again. Adonis (as I had taken to calling him in my mind) was rolling his eyes while his date laughed at something he said. I tried my best to ignore the feelings of inadequacy that bubbled up and focused on Renee.

"Thanks Mom for everything. We'll have a great time on this trip," we both smiled and refocused on our entrees. We were both fading fast and tomorrow was going to be a long day so we wanted to be rested. We paid our bill and headed back to the elevators. We were both exhausted by the time we got back to our room that we barely said goodnight before we were both fast asleep.

The next morning I woke up excited. Normally the thought of three days on a bus would nauseate me but this was a different situation. The last time I had taken a bus trip with my mother was in the fifth grade when she thought it would be more exciting to take Greyhound to visit Grandma and Grandpa than to fly. I think it had more to do with the cost as opposed to the adventure but even at that age I knew when to hold my tongue. To this day I still can't forget the smell that permeated the bus. I threw away all my clothes when we got back and every time I see a Greyhound bus on the road it still makes me shudder. I had high hopes that this experience would be different. After all it was three days touring the sites of Greece not the highways of Texas, how bad could it be?

A/N – Next chapter coming later on tonight!

Thanks for reading.