Making my way to Venice

My flight into Paris was fairly uneventful except for the 15mins of bad turbulence that had the cabin crew postponing the beverage service. Despite my most valiant efforts I wasn’t able to sleep.  So I watched horrible bosses, Contagion and about half of Abducted.  By the time I cleared customs, picked up my bags and found my way from terminal 2A to2B and found a Brioche Dorée, where I ordered a café crème and a chocolatine. I was so exhausted that two Advil, the coffee, the food and 500ml of water weren’t enough to quell the massive headache that had settled in along with a pretty lousy wave of nausea.  I really felt an overused piece of shoe leather.  I really wasn’t sure how I would get myself to the hotel in Venice. I even managed to survive the snarky Parisian Easy Jet check-in clerk who told me that purses were counted in the maximum one piece of carry-on luggage. I managed to squeeze my ginormous purse into my carry-on and was able to prove that it still met their standard sizing and could be inserted and removed easily from the metal measuring frame. I was lucky enough to find a lounge chair were I got to lay back and put my feet up, put my MP3 on, wrap one arm around my purse, lean on my carry on and fell into a coma until I woke 20mins later, startled and worried that I would miss my flight.  I wasn’t able to fall back asleep but managed to lie with my eyes closed and relaxed for another 40 minutes.

I made it into Venice, my old friend, around 5, realised that I hadn’t eaten since 9 that morning in Paris. So I met up with Mom & Dad between St-Mark’s square and the hotel, dropped off my luggage, got changed and then walked the streets to Rialto bridge.  I wanted to bring my parents to the nice cozy pizzeria where Steph and I had eaten and where I had ordered the diabolo pizza that really did end up making me breathe fire J

We found the restaurant, but it was packed, so we settled for another restaurant just around the corner.  Though Mom and Dad didn’t seem to notice, I can definitely mention to all the girlfriends out there reading this post that the waiter was quite cute and adorable.  Great face, great accent, very cute. But probably a little young, Bobbie’s age or a little younger….Anyhow, the food was great and reminded me that Italian food really does taste that much better in Italy.  We ordered three different things so that we could share.  I had Prosciutto pizza that was delicioso, mom’s Quattro frommaggi gnocchi was my favorite and dad’s lasagna was good but a little overcooked.  The cappuccinos were awesome and the tiramisu was sinful. The mascarpone filling had just the right amount of amaretto and the coffee and chocolate balance was perfect.  Though this tiramisu wasn’t the best I’ve ever had (a little too dry and cakey) it was a great way to jump back into the culinary delights of Italy.

Tomorrow morning we make our way to the Maritime port mid-morning and the cruise leaves port around 5pm so we’ll get to see the lights of Venice as we head off to our first destination: Bari, Italy