Monday: June 30
Boston to Venice, An Airport Port?
In the past, I’ve really liked Swiss Air, but for some reason, on this flight the seats seemed particularly small and cramped. This didn’t bode well for sleeping.
The dinner wasn’t too bad. We even got metal utensils. By about the time they finished cleaning up after dinner, I finished watching Paddington Bear, hit the rest room, and then tried to sleep.
Next time, I should bring a spare case for my glasses. This time, I just hooked the ear piece over the front of my shirt and tried to find a comfortable position. I basically couldn’t. I did sleep at some point, because I remembered dreaming, but I’m guessing I got maybe an hour of sleep.
At one point in the middle of the night, I shifted around, and for some reason looked at my glasses. I found that they were semi-pretzeled. One of the ear pieces was hooked over and under the nose pieces in a very awkward way. It required rather a bit of bending to get the ear piece free. I was rather shocked that the frame seemed intact and not bent into weird shapes.
We got a breakfast of yoghurt, a roll, and some cheese.
At the Zurich airport, I kept a sharp eye out for the company
that makes the kind of orange chocolate that I really like. We had eaten all of
the stuff we got on our last cruise, and for some odd reason, on the company
web site (at least in the US), you can get a dozen kinds of chocolate, but not
this kind. Rather strange. So I bought a bunch of that.
Back home, around Christmas, I found that I could, in fact, order that
chocolate online, however...they don't ship to the US. So ordering
online still didn't work.
We had to take the underground train to get to concourse A. This is just one set of cars that go back and forth, attached to a cable.
We had to wait in a fairly long line to get through passport control. I thought this was really silly, because we were just entering Switzerland to leave it as quickly as possible. Later, I figured that it actually made sense. Switzerland and Italy are part of the Shengan zone, so you don’t need to check documents when going between them. So we didn’t need to do anything with documents in Italy, so the passport check we got in Switzerland was the only one.
I was slightly nervous about the time, but we got through and got to the gate moments before they started early boarding. Amy was ahead of me (our seats were not together), but before I could scan in, a guy came over, hefted my carry on suitcase, and declared it too heavy, so it had to be checked. I’m not surprised, it was light enough when I put my SLR in my backpack, but when no one checked it in Boston, I moved the SLR from my backpack back to my carry-on bag.
Not only did I board after Amy, but my seat was significantly further back. It was a short flight, about 45 minutes, so we didn’t get much services. Basically, we got a bottle of water and a piece of chocolate.
When we got to Venice, Amy got off the plane significantly before I did. We didn’t have a jetway. We had to take a shuttle bus to the terminal. When I finally got out, there was no sign of Amy. I thought that she might have been on the bus, but she wasn’t. She was apparently on the bus that filled and left earlier. I expected to find her at the terminal, and I did.
We went to baggage claim and waited halfway to forever for the bags to start coming out. The Viking people were waiting outside, but eventually one came in to check on us, just about the time the bags started coming out. Eventually all of ours made it, and we went outside and joined the group. There was one or two dozen of us. We left our large bags with a guy who was delivering them to the hotel. Then we followed another guy to get to our ride.
Our hotel is on a private island, so we literally needed a boat to get there. I thought we would take a bus to a boat, but it turns out that after a lot of walking, we arrived at the dock and boarded our boat. How many times have you left the airport on a boat?
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We had about a 45 minute cruise to the island. Then we got a welcome spiel, checked in with the hotel, got our door cards, and got inside. We were planning to just get settled and then head over to Venice, but before we could leave, our luggage showed up. I changed from jeans and a cotton tee-shirt to shorts and a synthetic tee-shirt. It was probably around 5 when we took the hotel shuttle (boat) to Venice.
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We took a half hour gondola ride, then we found a restaurant that seemed good, so we had dinner there. They had a courtyard where you could eat. There was netting overhead to keep the birds away, and some interesting rolled up awnings for when it was sunny.
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After dinner, we wandered through Venice to get to the Rialto Bridge. Along the way, we got some ice cream for dessert. There are essentially no straight streets in Venice. The streets seem to go straight for a short while, and then end in a tee. We knew which direction we wanted to go in, but we had to keep jogging left and right rather than going in a straight line.
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We returned to the boat to the island just before 10, but the boat had already left. We had to wait for the 10:30 one.
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We got back to the island, went up to our room, got settled, and took showers. I wrote up today, and now close to midnight, it is time to hit the sack. After getting very sleep last night, I should sleep well tonight.
We went to bed just after midnight. That is normally very late for me, but on East Coast time, it was only 6pm, so I was actually early!