Away By Air to Venice

We’re off!

Three weeks of summer holiday.  Visiting Venice, Limnos and Cipieres.  We were joined on our holiday by Claire’s mother Sandra and Claire's niece Bridget.  A happy party of 6.

First stop Venice.  We set out on Sunday night at 2:00 am in the morning.  We flew Emirates, travelling directly to Venice with a 4 hour stopover in Dubai.  I think that we shall try to avoid this leg in the future.  The Seats on the Emirates 777-300 were very uncomfortable. The base of the seat was only three quarters the length of the average person’s thigh bone so the edge of the seat was digging into my hamstring muscle fort eh whole trip, which meant that it was almost impossible to sleep on this segment of the journey.  The food was simply appalling.  Stale sandwiches for a late supper, tasteless sausage and omelet for breakfast.  In fairness, Claire argued that she has had equally awful food on other flights and she told me that I was being a terrible snob and was really only complaining about the fact that I was not in Business Class.

A very busy Dubai Airport

When we did get to Dubai International airport at 5:50 am it was absolutely packed and as the morning wore on it became harder and harder and harder to find a place to sit while we waited for our connecting flight.  The major reason for this seemed to be the sheer volume of connections going through Dubai airport nowadays.  Emirates Airline appear to have a very aggressive plan for expansion and are setting up connections between cities all over the world, and channelling a huge number of people through their hub in Dubai.  The Airport is huge and wonderful, but it really cannot cope with the sheer volume of people that travel through it each day. There are not enough seats for people to sit on in the terminal and the bathrooms are heavily over subscribed.   People were forced to sit, sleep and even play cards on the floor throughout the terminal.

Reading the "Thief Lord" or "Our Guide to Venice"

The girls made the best of it they could.  They sat around reading one or their favourite books, “The Thief Lord”.  This book was an inspiration for us to travel to Venice, and now we are using it as a guide for the visit we are anticipating. 

The second leg of our Journey, from Dubai to Venice was much more comfortable than the first leg. The food was better and the journey shorter.  The transfer from Venice Marco Polo airport to Venezia was easy and quick using the Venice public Transport ACTV.  We were at the office of our housing agent within an hour of landing at the airport and ready for our Venetian Holiday Adventure to begin. 

Gabriella and Bridget striding out on the Piazzale Roma the Venetian Bus Terminal on arival in Venice

Our first view of a Venetian Canal.