After finally arriving in Italy after three dreadful plane connections we are finally here. It feels like 4 am to me but here in Italy, it is just the beginning of the day. The plane from JFK to Frankfort was actually the best of the 3. The Plane was a huge Lufansa aircraft that featured TV’s in the back of every seat even in coach (all though Darryl’s up in First class was much bigger). On this plane I watched half of season 4 of Dexter, which was one of the many show options available on the TV. I did this whilst playing on my computer the whole time, which was plugged into an outlet, An outlet! The plane had freaking outlets! The time went very fast and soon I was in Germany. From Germany we flew to Venice Marco Polo, this was the worst stretch of the trip because I walk down the isle to my seat, 25A to find a toddler sitting in my assigned seat, great…I think to myself. The parents pick up the kid to let me into my seat and the kid immediately begins screaming like a Velociraptor…this is going to be a fun 2 hour flight. Somehow two hours later I arrive in Italy and my mood is much brighter, It may have been those two jack and cokes I had on the plane. We leave the airport and hail a cabdriver who drives 140km/hour weaving through cars like a madman…of course my seatbelt is not functioning. We arrive in Venice and take a boat to our hotel. To get from where the boat drops us off to our hotel we had to lug our bags up and over a huge bridge called the Rialto- one of the four bridges spanning the Grand Canal. I am carrying my laptop bag, my camera, Darryl’s camera bag and my 50lbs suitcase. We get to the hotel to find out we are getting upgraded to the newer hotel, back across the Rialto that we just lugged our suitcases over and another few blocks away….Not to worry we are told by the hotel concierge who speaks very broken English…her “associate” is on the way to help us with our bags. Darryl’s bag was 8lbs over at the airport so his bag is 58lbs. I add the total weight of all our bags up in my head and it is over 160lbs. Not to worry the “associate” is here. The associate the concierge sent was just short of a midget, he could not of been more than 100lbs himself. He loaded all of our luggage on a dolly and we were off. It was painful to watch as he lugged our suitcases back over the Rialto and over about 3 more bridges…Venice has a lot of bridges. At every bridge I offered him a hand with our bags but the boy denied, probably some sort of hotel policy. At some points I thought going down the bridge that our luggage was going to pull the kid down with him because he had to put his entire body weight against the dolly on each step down, I gritted my teeth closed my eyes. We got to our new hotel safely and they showed us to our rooms. The rooms came with a complimentary bottle of proseco- a type of Italian champagne. The three of us went through the proseco in a short amount of time and it was off to dinner at the Cipriani. We stopped for some white wine on the way, then got on a boat in San Marco square which would take us to the Island of Giudecca. We ate dinner overlooking the lagoon back at Venice as the sun went down, the sound of the water rhythmically splashing against the dock below us, it was quite relaxing. We finished dinner and took the boat back to Venice, it was dark and we were drunk. We got back to the piazza de San Marco to find it flooded, it was high tide and the water was covering half of the square. Darryl told me that he has been to Venice when the water was a lot higher, all the stores actually put a piece of wood down by the door to keep the water out and that you have to step over it to get in, Venice is sinking and if you live here you deal with it. Venice aka The Floating City, City of Bridges, or the City of Canals is a large city of stone and marble buildings built atop a bunch of wooden posts in a muddy lagoon-what a great idea. I eventually located our hotel after about 20 minutes of us wandering around in the dark, it is very easy to get lost here especially at night. It was about time to retire but not before another bottle of white wine. Their wine here is much better here without the added sulfite...all in all it was a great first day!
Dexter on Plane:
Pictures:
