Days 31 & 32 - July 15 & 16 - The Journey Home

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There was really only time to pack, have breakfast, and start the long journey home in the morning. We packed carefully, my journals and our wine glasses in our carry-ons. We walked over to the nearest vaparetto stop where we could catch a vaparetto to the airport. These take separate tickets, which I wasn’t aware of, but it wasn’t a big deal - still a cost effective way to travel. The vaparetto trip took about an hour and a half.

When you get off the vaparetto, it is about a ten minute walk to the airport terminal. Ahead of us was a small family who had taken the vaparetto with us. “You said it wasn’t hot in Venice,” one of the kids whined. “You said the water kept it cool”.

“Yes, I said that.” The exhausted dad sighed. Sam and I glanced at each other and had a chuckle. That damn heat had caused a great deal of whining on our end too.

The whining wasn’t over. I was pretty much done now, and sad to be going home, and cranky. When we reached our area to check in, I could not believe it - it was surrounded by kids. Literally, there was some sort of trip of over 60 kids, all of whom had to be signed in individually, both passports and permission slips from parents checked. Chaperoning these kids was one - a single - young male teacher. I could not believe we were going to be stuck in a line, and then on a plane, with 65 teens and pre-teens. To make matters worse, they and there luggage were scattered in one big mob - not a line up in sight.

In reality, these kids were very well behaved and remarkably patient, certainly more so than a group of north American teens would have been, so there was nothing to complain about (except the hour wait to check in). Nevertheless, I might have had another small tantrum waiting in this “line”, informing Sam that I was done with the Italian version of line, done with their inability to organize (it seemed to me that, although there were three checkin clerks, only one kid was getting checked in at a time because they each had to cross-check every move with each other). I was done with waiting and with crowds and with heat. The teenagers ahead of us - one in particular whose attitude and bossyness over every other member of the trip, earned her the nickname of Foxy Loxy (from Chicken Run) - would later mock my tantrum, thinking we didn’t understand. I did, but figured the immaturity of it deserved to be mocked, and actually kind of enjoyed watching their recitation of it - it gave me a good chuckle, and entertained me in the never ending wait. Later, in the Amsterdam airport, Foxy Loxy dropped her expensive looking scarf, and Sam picked it up and rushed after her to give it back. She looked a little sheepish in that moment, saying thanks.

They bumped us up to “first class” - which was really just the front of the airplane, but at least a curtain separated us from the field trip of kids. We knew it would take them forever to get on board, so we stopped for a sandwhich and sweet at the little café a few steps from our gate before bothering.

The flights were unremarkable, except that there were no delays or problems. I watched about three movies on the flight from Amsterdam to Toronto, fighting to stay awake in order to adjust back to Canada time. I cringed again as we flew over Nova Scotia, continuing on for another two hours to Toronto only to come back this way again, swearing never again would I backtrack on flights. It ended up costing us more in the end anyway. In future, the most direct route will be my rule of thumb for flying.

We landed in Toronto without incident, grabbed our checked bag and in that moment I was so so grateful we had booked into the posh airport hotel. We wandered over the little footbridge from terminal 3 to the Sheraton, got checked into our room - which had a bathtub, a comfy king bed, and lovely chairs, and felt very comfortably North American. We went for a lovely swim in the hotel pool, enjoyed the hottub for a bit, then had nice showers and baths to clean off. We ordered a room service cheeseburger and fries to split, the ridiculous cost of which was more than most of the meals we paid for in Italy, but it was a cheeseburger and I had been dying for one and we were starving so it was worth it. And I once again remarked how nice it was to be set up enough that we could enjoy these little indulgences, and comfortable surroundings, when travelling. We didn’t settle in to sleep until after eleven Toronto time - about 4am in Venice.

It wasn’t even hard to wake up the next morning to catch our 9am flight, although we did let ourselves sleep in as long as possible resulting in an inability to sit together on the flight. But good ol’ Westjet. As soon as the flight attendant realized we were together but sitting separately, she moved a few people around and fixed us up. Another unremarkable flight and we were home. Sam’s mom met us at the airport to shuttle us to our next great adventure - the beautiful new home that was all ours.

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