Flight to Venice

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Our flight from San Diego to Washington DC seemed quick and painless we took some really cool pictures from the window of the plane over the San Diego coast and the amazing clouds we flew into.

Our flight arrived in DC on time and we had a decent lay over. There was a nice little wine cafe and bistro right next to our gate, so we enjoyed a good glass a wine and some small talk with others waiting for their flight. We ended up buying a bottle of wine for our long flight across the Atlantic. We enjoyed the wine, but it did not make the flight any more bearable.

The flight to Frankfurt was long and painful. We arrived around 7:30am Frankfurt time Friday, Sept 21. Our flight ended up arriving late and only had 20 minutes to catch our flight to Venice. We still did not have our boarding passes for this flight and we had to go through customs. I was a little worried, until they announced that all passengers connecting to Venice had an escort to take us to the connecting gate. THANK GOD for this!!! The Frankfurt airport is enormous. Even if we had been on time, we probably would not have made it in time to catch this flight.

About 15 of us were all escorted onto a shuttle bus taking at least a 10 minute drive from the place we just got off to the other end of the airport. We were taken through a maze of halls and stairs to customs. The line was short and sweet for passport check and then we had to put our bags through a security scan again. Bill's bag got flagged for further inspection and the time is a ticking away- again we still don’t have boarding passes at this point. I get through the security and ask our escort how long we have and reminded I needed boarding passes. He said we had 5 minutes to get checked in and I needed to get to gate 16. We were at gate 4 at this point. We carried on all our bags which were heavier than I expected, so getting to gate 16 in less than 5 minutes put me in panic. I was sweating like a beast and struggling to run to the gate. It was still far away from Gate 4.

We were very lucky since the flight to Venice was delayed and waiting for all the passengers from our Frankfurt flight to make the connection. Finally I make it to the check in counter and without a blink was issued our boarding passes and made it just in time to get back on another shuttle bus that took us back across the airport to where we got off the plane in the first place.

We are on our way to Venice aka Venezia!

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