Getting There

Due to Global Warming Europe was blasted with massive snowstorms the weekend of December 19th--which happened to be the weekend Nick and I were flying to Venice. I've been flying that particular weekend for several years (domestically) and always larked my way through without issue even in the midst of storms (coming or going). Our flight was routed through Amsterdam--and when we got to our airport we found a massive line in front of the Air France/KLM counter and word trickled down the line that Amsterdam was closed. Like, closed today and tomorrow closed. To the point that if you weren't willing to stay in Amsterdam for days you couldn't check in for the flight. This being a transatlantic flight, it left 300+ unhappy people standing in line passing rumors to one another. Unlike the game of telephone, most of the rumors made it to the end of the line in tact.

We had arrived at the airport around 4pm because originally our plane was leaving at 6:20pm. When it was finally our turn to beg pity from the ticket counter it was almost 10pm. For the last hour we had watched them pushing Air France passengers through the line because there was a flight to Paris just a few minutes after 10 which wasn't delayed or cancelled and best of all had outgoing flights to Venice on Saturday. Nick and I had watched these passengers check in and rush to their gate with hunger in our eyes (not just due to the utter lack of food in the terminal).

We turned our tired puppy eyes on the young Frenchman who looked like Chekov from the new Star Trek and explained that we didn't need or want to go to Amsterdam at all--we just wanted to go to Venice because we were taking a cruise and it was our honeymoon. The French are romantics. With a grin he pulled his supervisor over and managed to get us on the Air France flight to Paris that was leaving in 8 minutes. He handed us our boarding passes for that and our connecting flight, checked our bag and told us which way to go.

We ran to security--praised God for no line--ran to the train--which pulled up as we ran down the escalator--and ran to our gate.

We made it, boarded, and realized after sitting down that our Chekov had also upgraded us to the next step up from coach.




Two long flights later we landed at Marco Polo Airport and got to see the beauty of Venice first hand.



In the dark. Having your first tour of the Grand Canal at night is not a bad thing. Especially at Christmas time. (Alas, the camera was not as enthused about the Christmas lights as I was and none of the pictures came out).

Once safely at our hotel we got a restaurant recommendation and headed out on foot. We saw this when we turned the corner:

After dinner (raviolli and tiramisu, anyone?) we walked to the famed St. Mark's Square.

so yummy we forgot to take a picture until it was almost gone.
St. Mark's was arrayed for Christmas, coated with snow and cold. But so, so worth it.

Finally we returned to the hotel and crawled into bed completely exhausted, but happy.