Its been a long time planning, Jay and I (well, I) wanted to go to Venice so we decided to fly into Venice for 2 days before meeting Sarah and Anthony in Siena on Monday. They'll fly into Rome and then grab their rental car and meet us in Siena - it's about a 3 hour drive for each of us to Siena, we just aren't doing it after a red eye flight to Europe!
I was able to book our flights, business class, for half of the budget that we got from Manulife for flights by booking a layover in Munich, so we spent 2 hours in Munich airport today before taking a 1 hour flight to Venice.
The girls are staying with Mom and Dad, easy since we live there now until our house is built next spring/summer. They were supposed to take us to the airport but the girls didn't want to say goodbye at drop off..or at all, Sophie shrieked and clawed at the windows as I pushed her away from the car as we were leaving. Jay got out of the car and she clung to him like a monkey as he took her inside. He then deposited her in the door, a quick hug and ran out the driveway "Start the car!" I got a text from Mom before we even hit Lakeridge (3km away from home) "The girls are fine, I put Ellen on, its like you don't exist". lol.
When we got to the airport we dropped our bags at the Lufthansa counter, we managed to pack in one backpack for carry on and two medium suitcases that have all our stuff for 2 weeks. We have laundry in Siena and in Sorrento, so I tried not to pack too much. I sent my list to Sarah on her request so she could have an idea of what I would be packing. Security was a BREEZE thanks to NEXUS, really I don't know why everyone doesn't have it, but if everyone did then there would be no point in having it I guess. The line for security was hundreds of people long, queued up like a new ride at Canada's Wonderland and we walked right up to the front of the line with the NEXUS cards, literally to the front. We were bags dropped and through screening in I would say less than 15 mins.
Jay wanted to go to the airport a little early because we get into the Lounge with our tickets, the lounge is always crap food and crap wine though, its free, but its crap. And it was PACKED in there. So Jay had a beer and some nuts and then we left because we had 90 minutes until boarding so we figured we could sit down somewhere and have a nice drink and a snack, which we did.
We FaceTimed the girls, they are having dinner at Hansen’s.
I sent them this GIF
On the plane the seats aren't pods, but they do lie flat and you get a pillow, blanket and a 'comfort kit' that has socks and an eye mask, etc in it.
Our flight left at 8:15pm and is 7 hours long so arrives at 3am our time (10am Munich time), so my plan is to watch a movie and try to fall asleep. I woke up this morning at 6am to pee and forced myself to stay awake so that I would be tired enough to sleep on the flight hopefully, I don't like to sleep in vehicles, I don't know why. So I flipped through the movies and decided on Deadpool 2. Jay was watching Solo, but when he saw me watching Deadpool changed his mind and put it on too - he's hilarious with that movie, he giggles and can't stop.
Because its not too late we do eat the meal on the plane, we both ordered beef, it came with asparagus, fingerling potatoes, some kind of squash medley and a thick sauce, it tasted mildly perfumy - I figured out later they must have heated the meals in the same place they heated those little steamed towels with lavender because when they brought the towel later that's what it tasted like. I just ate the meat and the salad on the side and left all the other stuff - Jay had my bun.
After the movie I put my seat back and tried to sleep - I did sleep for about 3 hours, a horrible airplane sleep but it was definitely better than nothing because I didn't feel like total crap all day and, miraculously, I didn't have a headache! With 2 hours left of the flight they served breakfast - just 4 hours after dinner, lol, I watched Girl on A Train and just ate the mini croissant on my plate with a little jam - Jay ate the rest of my fruit and yogurt.
We landed in Munich a little ahead of schedule, our bags are travelling right through to Venice (hopefully!), so we just found out new gate, which had changed since being in the air, and waited 90 mins or so to be able to board our next flight to Venice. The airline, which I booked through Air Canada and was Operated by Lufthansa was actually operated by Air Dolomiti which is an Italian Regional airline. The seats were 2 and 2 and since we were in business class we both had 2 seats to ourselves in a row, we were in the bulkhead so there was lots of room. Jay was getting tired at this point (its now 4am for us) so he slept, poorly, on the plane for the 1 hour flight and his neck has been hurting ever since. Good thing I booked us a massage for 7pm tonight (1pm your time). The massage has two functions, to relax us and wake up the muscles after sitting for 11 hours and also to keep us from going to sleep until we want to go to sleep (after dark here).
Because its not too late we do eat the meal on the plane, we both ordered beef, it came with asparagus, fingerling potatoes, some kind of squash medley and a thick sauce, it tasted mildly perfumy - I figured out later they must have heated the meals in the same place they heated those little steamed towels with lavender because when they brought the towel later that's what it tasted like. I just ate the meat and the salad on the side and left all the other stuff - Jay had my bun.
After the movie I put my seat back and tried to sleep - I did sleep for about 3 hours, a horrible airplane sleep but it was definitely better than nothing because I didn't feel like total crap all day and, miraculously, I didn't have a headache! With 2 hours left of the flight they served breakfast - just 4 hours after dinner, lol, I watched Girl on A Train and just ate the mini croissant on my plate with a little jam - Jay ate the rest of my fruit and yogurt.
We landed in Munich a little ahead of schedule, our bags are travelling right through to Venice (hopefully!), so we just found out new gate, which had changed since being in the air, and waited 90 mins or so to be able to board our next flight to Venice. The airline, which I booked through Air Canada and was Operated by Lufthansa was actually operated by Air Dolomiti which is an Italian Regional airline. The seats were 2 and 2 and since we were in business class we both had 2 seats to ourselves in a row, we were in the bulkhead so there was lots of room. Jay was getting tired at this point (its now 4am for us) so he slept, poorly, on the plane for the 1 hour flight and his neck has been hurting ever since. Good thing I booked us a massage for 7pm tonight (1pm your time). The massage has two functions, to relax us and wake up the muscles after sitting for 11 hours and also to keep us from going to sleep until we want to go to sleep (after dark here).
We arrived in Venice, disembarked the plane and went to the luggage carousel. I think our luggage took longer to come out than the flight from Munich to Venice, Mom said "Welcome to Italy" when I told her. lol. If I hadn't seen my purple luggage on the baggage cart among the sea of black bags I might have been worried it didn't make it, but I had, so I wasn't. We had a 10 min walk or so to the water transportation area - we'll see how much a water taxi is (20 mins to the hotel and directly to the door) vs a vaporetto (water bus essentially that will be 40 to 60 mins to our stop). There was a big difference in price but we wanted to get there directly so took the water taxi. There was a traffic jam on the way into Venice from the airport because the boats have to stay between the piers, like a highway.
We got to the Hotel L'Orologio at a little after 2:30pm but our room was ready, which was awesome.
We dropped our stuff, did a quick FaceTime with the girls and then went out in search of some place to sit and eat "dinner" before our massages. It started to rain and neither of us had our rain jackets, which we brought because the forecast is light rain for a lot of the time that we're here, so we ducked into a pizza place and shared a cold cut and a cheese plate, a caprese salad, a diavolo pizza and a half bottle of wine. We walked back to the hotel and we have a couple of hours to kill, so I read my book and Jay watched Netflix. Around 5pm I got under the covers, set the alarm for 6pm and had a nap. It was glorious. I got up and had a shower to wake up and we headed out to the massage which is at a nearby hotel (9 min walk across the Rialto Bridge). I mistyped my directions and took us to the Hotel Relias instead of the Hotel Reali, thankfully they were only 4 minutes apart (I did know that the Relias was in the same general direction when the map took us that way because I had mapped it before I booked the massages).
We ended up booked with a couples massage in the same room, the masseuse came in and showed us the room, showed us the bathroom where to change and showed us two pair of disposable underwear, one for the lady and one for the men. We both opted to just wear our own underwear and came out in nothing but. They had removed the blanket from the bed and told us to lie face down, there was only the sheet that covers the leather massage table so we lay on top of the sheet (well, Jay was already under so he got up and went on top) and waited for the masseuses to come in. Both of us are so tired, I think I almost went to sleep just waiting for them. First thing they did is lay a soft bath sheet over you like a blanket and give a general rub down on top of the blanket, then they both climbed onto our beds overtop of us pressing down the length of our spines. It was so good - a combination thai massage and Swedish massage. I could have been a little deeper as far as the massage went, but it was extremely relaxing. Again, European massages, in my experience, are a little more handsy than massages at home, there is a lot less modesty (or litigation) because although there wasn't (but I can't say for sure) any direct contact with my nipples the rest of my breasts got their very second massage (the first being 2 years ago in Berlin).
After our massage we walked back to the hotel, I wrote some of the blog and then read my book while Jay watched Netflix and then went to sleep. When I turned out the light it was probably somewhere around 10pm (4pm home time), I set the alarm for 7:30am so that we can get up for breakfast early, which is included at the hotel - we have a private food tour tomorrow at 10:45am so I won't have much breakfast but want to try to get on Italy time completely tomorrow.
By the time I got to your breast massage, I was laughing/crying. Mom xo
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