Dianna brought Luna to us in North Carolina, and Doug was now officially on "dog-duty" with 3 rambunctious pups who wanted his attention and walks while we cavorted in Europe. Our trip to the airport was not uneventful in that I became convinced that I did not pack my debit card to get euros, and tearing apart my purse and meticulously packed suitcase. Just as we made our final turn to the airport, I found the card, and had to reconstruct my suitcase.
We were so lucky, Dianna and I! Our AA flight was very under booked! I don't sleep well on planes but did doze off in the wee hours of the morning. I looked up, and Dianna was gone! Gone, gone! She had been in the window seat, with no one between us, and me on the aisle, and she was gone. I got up and looked around, and somehow she had walked right over me, took the row behind me, had ALL the pillows, and was stretched out across three seats! I promptly copied her, and took over my aisle's three seats. Almost bliss!
Unfortunately, I mess up the flights and had gotten us to Heathrow in London, requiring a bus trip from Heathrow to Gatwick. It was mildly complicated, but we arrived in Gatwick quite early. I've been discovering some travel-hacking tips, and got to put to use one of my new favorites: the Priority Pass. You get this through Chase Sapphire Reserve for free and it allows you access to 1100 worldwide airport lounges. This meant that Dianna and I had got to enter this lounge, order a meal, use the buffet, wifi, very comfortable seating, and have unlimited drinks. We felt indulged!
Next, we landed in the Marco Polo airport in Venice and had to navigate through the process of getting euros from ATM machines and purchasing our Alilaguna Blue water bus ticket, and our vaporetto passes, including Dianna's discounted pass. We needed euros for the hotel taxes at each of the hotels. The Alialaguna is the water bus that got us from the airport to the area of the lagoon (Venice) near our hotel. And the vaporetto passes would give us 3 days of access to Venice's public transportation system (water buses) riding up and down the Grand Canal!
So, off we went on the Alilaguna to our stop at Zattere, then up and down bridges to find our hotel:
3 comments:
It looks awesome and how wonderful to share that time with your daughter and future daughter-in-law.
Oh, my gosh, Angela! It does sound like you had a wonderful trip! I miss Venice so much. I fell in love with that city! Your post made me go back and read the 4 I posted on my blog about our trip and I really wish I had written more, because it feels like I barely scratched the surface. I think I may have written some of it on FB, and then lost my mojo for the blog. I hope you’ll write a post about what made it into the small suitcase, and why it was chosen. I keep trying with each subsequent trip to improve my packing, but I always seem to overpack, or wishing I had packed more of something else. Also, I’m not sure why you paid for the hotel taxes in cash. Is this a new travel hack? We always just hand over our credit card and pay for the whole thing with it. Dianna is looking so beautiful! We are looking forward to seeing all of you in the Fall. So, how did you manage to squeeze your camera equipment in the little suitcase? So many questions!
Maria, I totally agree with you on the wonderfulness of Venice! I don't know if paying the tax in cash is new, but each hotel seemed to request it that way, either through an email to us prior to our stay, or by making it clear to us when we checked in. Actually, I think there was one hotel, in Rome, that accepted credit card for this payment, but both Venice and Florence wanted cash. I was glad I was prepared. I'll tell you more about the new camera I bought for this trip, because it weighed 1/2 of the weight of my Nikon, but it's worth a post of it's own! My packing was truly minimalist, and I must say that I did not miss anything! It was especially challenging, though, because the weather forecast was predicting cold, rain, snow, and heat!
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