(CNN) — Cheryl Hurst checked into the luxurious St. George Lycabettus Hotel in Athens, Greece, in summer 2017. Upon her arrival, she headed straight to the elevator, eager to freshen up in her room.
The doors were gliding closed, and Cheryl nipped in just in time, apologizing to the people already inside — oblivious that her future fiancé was among them.
“He” was Preet Banerjee, a Canadian entrepreneur in his 30s visiting Athens for a conference.
“I remember Preet was wearing a yellow watch — and he had a white shirt on that had the sleeves rolled up, which is just, I don’t know, instantly hot on any guy,” says Cheryl.
Even the elevator of the five-star hotel was sleek and opulent. Cheryl — a Canadian-born PhD student in her 20s who’d flown in from the UK — felt slightly out of place dressed in shorts and a crop top, weighed down by her traveling backpack.
Cheryl says she was “instantly attracted” to Preet. Preet says he didn’t pay Cheryl much attention at first.
“My first impression when she came into the elevator was ‘Oh, a girl with a backpack,'” he tells CNN Travel.
Preet was in the elevator with two friends.
“We all live in Toronto,” he explains. “They happened to be vacationing at the same time as this conference, and so we agreed to meet up in Athens.”
Cheryl was heading to the seventh floor of the hotel, and, coincidentally, so were Preet and his party. This became clear when the group realized their elevator only went as far as floor six.
It turned out there were two elevators in the hotel, and only one went higher up the building.
As the hotel guests decamped on floor six and waited for the other elevator, they recognized each other’s accents and realized they were all Canadians in Greece.
“Where are you from?” Preet asked Cheryl.
Cheryl grew up in Niagara Falls, Canada, but she’s lived in the UK for most of her adult life. Brits are always asking her where she’s from, and she always says “Toronto” because “if you say Niagara Falls, people then start up a conversation about, ‘I didn’t know Niagara Falls was a real town.'”
So, on autopilot, Cheryl told Preet she was from Toronto.
“What part of Toronto?” asked Torontonian Preet, as they entered the second elevator.
“Oh no, I’m not actually from Toronto, I’m from Niagara Falls,” backtracked Cheryl, reddening.
“What a weird thing to lie about,” Preet teased.
The elevator carried them to floor seven and Preet and Cheryl continued talking. They…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CNN.com – RSS Channel – Travel…