Travel day to Italy

We slept in after two late days of late nights. We got up and had breakfast around 9:30am. We had considered getting ready and heading to the Louvre but felt like it would be too much. Instead we packed up our things after breakfast and headed out to finish some souvenir shopping. I was able to find the same t-shirt for Abby I had found the night before and also some stamps to send Bonnie a couple of post cards from France and England. After, we finished our shopping we sat at a little café and I had chocolat chaud. They have a warm chocolate sauce at the bottom of your cup and then give you steamed milk with foam and some sugar and you mix up your own hot chocolate. It was one of the best hot chocolates I have ever had. They also had a cat that came up to us while we watched people pass by in the rain. I wrote my post cards. On the way back we got some strategic pictures close to our hotel for posterity sake. We brought our luggage down and the shuttle was already there waiting for us to leave. It is a 50 minute car ride to the airport. With all the round abouts in Paris and the merging lanes I don’t think I would ever want to drive. It was a hair raising experience whipping around cars and people and bikes but we made it to the airport and mom only gasped once when we thought someone was going to pull out right in front of us. The driver dropped us at the airport and we had to find our way to Iberia. After a couple quick questions to strangers we managed to find our way. We checked in and decided to return to Starbucks before we headed through security.
Once we finished our coffee, we decided it was time to head in. We had a blond moment and grabbed a bottle of water. Not only did we have to leave the water, due to our strange bags they checked every bag manually. They checked my laptop case because of the travel mouse. They had to show everyone around because it was such a novelty. Then they checked my shoulder bag because we bought a splitter for our headphones so we could watch a movie, It is shaped like an asterisk. Then came mom’s bags….. oh my. It was a little embarrassing and the people with bags for inspection behind us were perturbed but it was funny. In the end they only took mom’s hairspray.
We got to the gate and waited to board. It’s like flying Frontier nothing is free. We had a good flight. We watched one of the movies I bought Selfless. It was really good. We only got part way through when we landed in Madrid. They didn’t have our gate posted so once we figured out they don’t post the gate until 30-40 minutes before your flight we began searching for dinner. We went to an international cafeteria style restaurant and had Spanish Paella and red wine. It was pretty good for airport food, then we headed to Starbucks to do some journaling and get coffee. Coffee is a very interesting thing and funny too. It means something different everywhere that we go. American coffee is very watery compared to the coffees here. I think the coffees in Paris were more like espresso than coffee, if you asked for American coffee they just add water. Then in London it was similar to ours. Here in Venice it is as if they’ve steeped the coffee in the grounds for hours and reduced the water by half. Then if you want to add cream to your coffee they ask if you want it hot or cold. They have hot milk to add to your coffee. Like I said it is like coffee in translation. We decided to leave the Starbucks to check our gate as it was boarding. In our rush to pack up my mom spilled her latte all over the floor, a grande, all of it on the floor. Crazy moment. Then we let them know but they didn’t come out. Then I went to tell them, the second time they seemed to get it. It was nice for a change to be able to speak the language of the country your in. I could speak fluently in complete sentences and didn’t have French words mixed in or anything. Unfortunately it was a brief stay : ( We made the next flight too. Miraculous I know. We were feeling a little stressed since we weren’t sure how to get to the hotel yet. We had ideas but no firm plans. In fact I probably shouldn’t say this but we didn’t even check to see if our flights had been postponed or moved up or anything we just keep showing up at the scheduled times and getting on. So we got our bags and tried to find out how to get to our hotel. I guess if you use a private water taxi it can cost $110 Euros. We decided the water bus was just fine and bought a two way ticket on the airport water bus shuttle thingy and a water bus pass for two days. Then we had to drag our bags across two parking lots and down the boat dock to our waiting station. The first guy told me the yellow bus but there wasn’t one it was an orange bus. I then began reading the schedule and my mom went back to the ticket booth We came to the same conclusion it was the Orange bus we wanted. We then proceeded down the ramp and waited for the boat. My mom thought we were on the boat, so when I told her we had to get on she was confused but it all worked out. We all moved our luggage aboard and sat below on booth like seats in the main cabin. There were windows but it was after 10pm so everything was dark. We headed out to sea. Venice is an island about 20 minutes from shore. We made quite a few stops and then went down part of the grand canal to our station. We then had to get out bags off the boat and start rolling them down stone paved “streets” to our hotel. It wasn’t too far away. I thought one “street ended at our hotel but it ended in an canal so we had to back track to another route but we made it. We did have to carry our bags up the steps and over two bridges to get to the hotel. It was very picturesque. Very clean and dream like really. The streets are like a maze one leading to another around the next corner. The maps don’t show every turn or every little path you go down.
We checked in and headed to our room. Once in our room the lights went out and we couldn’t figure out where to turn them on. We sat

with the door open for some light as we tried to figure it out. We ended up figuring out there is a slot just inside the door you insert your card in and it like completes a circuit for the power to flow into your room. Also, they would only give us one key, I think due to fact that we had to power issue. We basically got in bed and went to sleep. Another travel day done.