Day 11: Messy Travel Home

Our travel day started with a 7:30 shuttle ride to the Venice airport.  All eight of us took the same shuttle, even though our flight times were an hour apart (the front desk clerk thought the Virginians, traveling with baby R, might need a bit more time to get checked in and through security).  Once we were all at the gates, we met up for breakfast and visiting, including R's first gelato (he didn't like it, but we suspect he was too tired to appreciate it).  

At the same time my trio's gate came up for boarding, the Virginians saw that their flight to Frankfurt had been delayed 45 minutes.  They only had 75 minutes of layover to begin with, so they got concerned.  We boarded our flight for Zurich and saw the morning break over the Dolomites.

We had a brief layover in Zurich, long enough for lunch, potty, and traversing the airport from one gate to another.  The mountains in the distance sure were beautiful though.

Before our flight home took off, we got word that the Virginians had made it to Frankfurt and it looked like they'd make their flight to Newark.  Phew!

The flight from Zurich to LAX was uneventful.  I watched Taken, Rogue One, Australia, half of Raging Bull (hated it), and Valkyrie, read, and cared for H.  Once back at LAX, we got through passport control in 90 seconds and then took 60 minutes to get our bags.  Then, we headed over to the Global Entry interview line.  We hoped that the line would move quickly, but after an hour, we were less than halfway through the line, and we watched the quantity of agents taking applications drop by half, we bailed.  We had already been in the airport for 3 hours, and we just wanted to get home.

The journey from the airport home was not our finest hour.  We were tired, irritable, grumpy, hungry, and surly.  H was the only one who didn't lose her temper.  I tripped over four bags and took a faceplant in the middle of the parking garage.  We never ended up eating.  We got home at around 8.30, put H to bed in her traveling clothes, and zonked out as quickly as we could.  

But, our trip was less traumatizing than the Virginians', whose final connection to ORF ended up getting cancelled.  They rented a car to drove home, finally crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge at dawn.  They're all in bed now, finally.  As I write this on the morning of the 3rd, S is already up and getting ready for work.

What a rough journey!

Day 10: Last Day in Italy!

Happy New Year to you and yours!

Today was our last full day in Italy, and for the first time since we arrived, we didn't need to set an alarm clock.  Everyone slept in and started packing for our check-out later in the afternoon.

At noon, Grandma, H, and I headed across town to a mask-making workshop taught by an artisan in his private studio.  He taught us how to design and paint a mask, and then we got to watch his deft hand as he did the final decorations! 

Once we got back to the airbnb, we had a few minutes to finish our packing.  Then, we took a boat to the transit center and then two vans to the airport hotel.

The hotel is 200 m from the entrance of the airport, but since it was New Years Day, many of the local restaurants were closed.  The clerk at the front desk said that if we wanted something quick and open (it was 5.30, and most restaurants didn't open until 7), we could go to the little kebab/pizza stand next door.  We did, and while we were waiting for them to prep our food, we found a beautiful huge tree trimmed with huge plastic jugs, each with a lightbulb inside it.  Magical!

We took the food back to the hotel, had one last dinner with everyone, and by 7pm or so, we all started winding back to our rooms for our last night in Italy.  One more early wake-up, and then we're off on our journey back home!