The glamorous life goes to Venice

We do the math.  It will be way cheaper for us to have airport shuttle service than to leave our car.  Cristina makes the arrangements. An SUV is ordered.  Ding Dong.  Car is here. What happened to the SUV.   A white stretch limo has come to whisk us away.

The girls are thrilled.  Driver has barely made it down the hill and we’re all shuffling around inside.  Alysha and I are in the very back facing forward.  We have to.  The thing bounces around and rarely seems to go straight.  Nausea sets in.  Manage (barely) to make it to airport without losing it.

Check in.  Drop off bags.  Grab nosh and wait until everyone else is boarded before we sashay up.  In our comfy cozy sweats.  We don’t care.  We’re not the Kardashians.  We’re from Seattle and are going to be on planes for the next 14 hours.

Settle in and do the things that people do when cramped into ugly (Delta) plane with foam from seat backs poking through and looking at us.  Try to watch movie on notebook paper size screen fifteen feet down the aisle.  If you don’t have a good view (and who does), the screen is dark and blurry.  Noelle’s ear phone jack doesn’t work.  Give up.  Cristina and Noelle are seated in front of Alysha and I.  They recline which reminds me.  Try to recline chair but nope.  Turn around and look.  Knees smooshed up right to the back of chair by smooshed up guy behind me.  Poor fellow.  Have mercy plus would do no good anyway as chair isn’t going anywhere except into large knees.  Read entire book on kindle (love kindle).  The girls are asleep.  But it is only midnight so have at least another hour to go.

Eventually fall asleep.  Mouth more or less closed which is a plus.  Flash.  Giggle.  Flash.  Blasted kids have woken up.  Are taking excrutiatingly horrid pictures of me that they will now facebook to the world.  Brats.  Ignore them.  Fall back asleep.  On and off until we arrive in Amsterdam.

We trundle off plane.  Good thing about sweats.  They don’t wrinkle.  Get onto next plane.   Fall asleep again.  More flashes and awful picture taking by tormentors.  Arrive in Venice.  Head to baggage claim.  The airport is nice.  Stand at carousel.  And stand.  And stand.  Until realize – no bags.

We are the last hopeful (naïve) ones waiting for the luggage to come off.  The rest (and there are quite a few) have already hustled to the lost baggage line.   This means we are the last in line.  Wait almost an hour.  Fairly patiently.  Nice lady tells us it may arrive tomorrow.  She gives us little packages which turn out to be survival kits.  We grumble out the door but snap out of it.  It is pretty out!  We’re on way to the water taxi!  How cool is this!  So what if everyone will know we are Americans from Seattle land of black and gray sweats.

Taxi takes a very long time.  Alysha and I share a Dramamine.  Hope I’ve brought enough of them. We look with interest at the people as they get on and off.  A lady sits next to us.  We check her out.  Completely put together from the bottoms of her white, silver high heeled sandals and violent red painted toes – to the top of her perfectly highlighted, cut, curled and Sophia Loren sun-glassed head.  She pulls out an Italian fashion magazine and ignores us.

We arrive at our destination and debark.    One thing good about an airline losing luggage – don’t have to cart anything around.  Tell the girls to go one direction. They ignore me and go the other.  Which turns out to be the correct way.  As we are walking across the famed St. Mark’s square, we are acutely conscious that we are the only ones in the entire place who look like we’ve been on a plane for 14 hours.   And that we are going to be looking this way for at least another day.