The kids flew in from all over the country to Chicago. We all met at the Lufthansa counter. They were weighed down with gifts from their host families, including this Rudolph stuffed animal that had a light up nose that the TSA thought was a bomb.
We got settled into our seats. Everyone was sitting in different parts of the plane. One of the older kids tried to upgrade himself to Business Class.... I put an end to that real fast.
We got to Frankfurt on time and we made our way over to the gate for Riga before I said goodbye to the kids and the two chaperones, Inga and Kristine.
My next stop was the Lufthansa service center where I used my staff ticket to get on the standby list for a late morning flight to Venice. It was wide open when we left Chicago but had somehow filled up, but I still managed to get a seat. Albeit a middle one, in a row in front of a very dramatic Italian family with a toddler named Guiseppe who screamed so loud the woman sitting next to me almost had a nervous breakdown.
I made it Venice where is was cold cold cold but thankfully had stopped raining. Julie and Danny met me at the Piazza Roma where the bus drops off from the airport. This was my second time to Venice. I first came to visit them in 2006 when I did an around the world trip. We made our way back to their flat, dropped my luggage and then went for coffee (I had hot chocolate). Julie had vocal lessons on the mainland (Julie and Danny study opera) and Danny was going to meet with a colleague, so I took that as an opportunity to crash and catch some sleep since I had been up all night on the flight over to Germany.
For dinner we went to a restaurant called Il Sumpta. They had taken me there on my last visit. I had a great dinner and we shared a wonderful tiramisu for dessert!
The next morning it was pouring down rain but Julie and I made our way to the fish market to get our dinner for that night. I learned that the narrow streets of Venice are not real umbrella friendly. It's kind of like a game of chicken to see who is going to move first.
When we got back to the apartment, it stopped raining (figures) so we made our way around the city for a little sightseeing.
It's now illegal to feed the birds in Venice, so there aren't quite as many. The seagulls are huge. Julie says they are the size of small dogs and sometimes they eat the pigeons.
This is the Fenice.... the famous opera house that burned down and was the motivator for the John Berendt book "City of Falling Angels".
Dinner was wonderful. Julie and Danny are fantastic cooks. The fish that we had, Orate, was tasty! We also had risotto and Julie made homemade tarter sauce to go with the fish.
I managed to drink a little too much, including almost a whole bottle of Prosecco, in a Smurf's glass.
A fun evening of course, and made even better by good food and good wine. The next morning came quick with a 4:30 am wake up. I caught the 5:45 bus to the airport and made my morning flight to Spain and connected home in a comfortable Business Class seat where I slept for 6 of the 11 hours of the flight.
