The trip to Italy, part 1

Deanna and I had so much fun in Italy! We visited Venice, Florence, and Rome. The total trip took 8 days but two of those were en route. Let me tell you, traveling overseas at Christmas was very interesting. Lemme sum up:

Dec. 20: flew out of Houston. Arrived at Bush Intercontinental Airport 3 hours before flight and discover that the flight was delayed by 3 hours due to snow at Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport. There was record snow in the UK and Europe this year. Heathrow Airport in London was shut down for DAYS! Fortunately we didn't have to go through London to get to Italy. CDG had cleared up and got their runways snow-free but still...a delay.

Dec. 21: Delayed at CDG for approximately 2.5 hours due to snow. But eventually we did get on our way. Arrived in Venice almost 6 hours late, which meant we'd missed our prepaid water taxi to the hotel. While we were trying to decide about buying a ticket for the water bus, a very nice man asked about our travel arrangements and turned out he was from the water taxi company. Lots of delays that week, obviously, so he placed a call and arranged for us to get our taxi after all. AWESOME. Trips looking up already.

It was freezing on the taxi (they're open air) but Venice at night, during Christmas...gorgeous. We made it to the hotel, checked in, found some dinner, and then called it a night. We'd missed one of our two days in Venice but, okay, we can live with that.



The next morning we had breakfast, then went out to see..rain! It rained the whole day. But we were determined and bought our bus tickets, then headed over to Il Duomo. The bus boats were neat and a really fun way to see the city. I'd read that during the winter, Venice floods easily and often, and that was certainly the case for us. The Duomo was flooded but we walked around, peeked in the shops and basically enjoyed the fact that we were in Italy!








Now, I'm a bad traveler in one very important way - I get horrible jet lag. And if ya throw in some rain and cold, my jet lag will try to turn into the flu. Full stop. So about halfway through the day, I start to feel like crap. We get some lunch and slowly my system starts to wind down. We headed back to the hotel where I took a looooong nap. Eventually Deanna went out and saw the city on her own. I was out for the count.

Venice was okay but I can't say I felt like I'd seen anything really. Deanna really enjoyed it (which makes sense). I'll have to go back during Spring or Summer. Mostly the city was just drab brownish, rain colored.

Overall: Venice during Christmas - probably not the best idea. (Though I bet it would have been amazing if it had snowed.)