Venice Bound


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Europe » Italy » Veneto » Venice
September 23rd 2015
Published: September 24th 2015
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First a big shout out to Sharon’s mother Shirley for her 86thBirthday today. We’ll try to call her but with the time difference and her schedule it may be difficult to get ahold of her for a few days. But we still hope she has a great day!



It was over a year and a half ago when we decided to take a cruise on the ms Nieuw Amsterdam for our fifth wedding anniversary. It might not sound like much; so, I told Sharon she could impress fellow cruisers by saying it was our 60th(if you count by months). It might be more in line with some who will be cruising with us. We originally booked the Venice to Venice (by way of Turkey and Greece) and Venice to Barcelona (by way of Greece, the west side of Italy, France and Monaco) as a 24-day legacy cruise; and, for good measure Sharon tacked on the cross-Atlantic repositioning cruise as a 13-day extension since the cost was comparable to flights back to the US. We thought that we’d made the perfect plan, when out of the blue Holland America cancelled that last leg of our journey, extending our original honeymoon ship’s stay in Europe by another two weeks. We were able to resume our original plan by now flying back to Rome from Barcelona to board the ms Zuiterdam for its 19-day cross-Atlantic repositioning voyage. We were offered that at the same price that we’d paid, upgraded to a balcony, and given more than enough shipboard credit to cover the flight from Barcelona to Rome. I guess it’s a win-win but ask me again when we have to leave the Nieuw Amsterdam and port our luggage to Rome. Sharon has all of the logistics worked out and this way we get a full day extra tour of Rome and a countryside tour going from Rome to the ship (that we booked on our own).



As I am starting to write down these words for our blog (am I really up to 43 days of this), I reflect back over the past couple of weeks when our journey here really began. I should mention that we are in the process of moving from Ohio to Las Vegas where we are expecting our new home to be ready in early December. We’ve now moved out of our Ohio home, had the carpets (I should mention, “the blue carpets”) replaced with a more neutral realtor friendly color. We’ve also had most of the “blue walls” painted to match the complimenting neutral color of the remaining walls. Our realtor is smiling from ear-to-ear at the prospect of finally crossing this listing off of his “For Sale” list. Hopefully an open house this weekend goes a long ways towards achieving that goal. Sharon had me bury a small statue of St. Joseph (upside down and facing the house, so that he’d be uncomfortable and hopefully quickly assist in finding good buyers for the prospect of being dug up again and given a place of honor in our new home. As you may have guessed my wife Sharon is Catholic and while from time to time St. Anthony has been called on to successfully find things that I’ve misplaced, so far the verdict is still out on good St. Joe. I’m just saying.



Two weeks ago the piano movers came to haul Sharon’s baby grand into temporary storage, awaiting its journey to Las Vegas once our house is ready. A week ago Monday the movers came to place our remaining items into storage, which we’ve been diligently boxing up ever since our house went on the market back at the end of April. It was part of our realtor’s declutter strategy to help sell our home (and we all know how that has turned out so far). We’ve moved on the total declutter strategy, and Sharon feels certain that people will now be able to properly view the formal dining room as just that, and not the music room that we morphed it into with her baby grand as the centerpiece. And I’m afraid that I’m responsible for the morphing. Sharon had been practicing on her upright piano and happened to comment that her music teacher had offered the opinion that she might really enjoy playing on a baby grand piano instead; but, she felt that there just wasn’t any place to put one. I incredulously offered the observation that we had a dining room that I had eaten in exactly once in three years, and thought is might make a pretty nice music room. Two weeks later a baby grand piano was sitting in the middle of our now music room.



After the movers left we began our cross-country journey, from Ohio to my mother’s home in California, by way of Las Vegas to do a cabinet-walk-thru of our new home. We made it well past Indianapolis the first night. The second day we made it most of the way across Kansas, just short of the Colorado border. The third day we crossed Colorado and made it to Beaver Utah (only because the many lodgings Sharon had found at the intersection of I-70 and I-15 online were probably the ones that we’d passed twenty miles earlier). The fourth day we made it Vegas where we had several meeting but were done by noon on Friday. Then it was on to LA for a couple days of rest before continuing on to Venice.



My little gold Prius was positively packed with our luggage for the cruise and cross-country journey, my computer/printer/power supply/monitor and Sharon’s two laptops, some files, and oh yes: a couple bags full of goodies courtesy of our friend Lin who once worked with Sharon and that company that shall not be named. After the first night in a motel on the road, we resumed our journey and stopped at an IHOP. When I touched the front door handle to lock the care, it gave a warning beep and the onscreen monitor noted that a key had been detected inside the vehicle. This is a very convenient message when the key is actually inside the vehicle, but quite a nuisance because I could feel that the key was in my pocket. Then it dawned on me, the other key that I used to use, but which had stopped working two years ago, had chosen now to start working again. And it was somewhere in the car. Somewhere in my fully packed car. Somewhere in the least accessible place. I thought I had packed it in my file box which contained most of my “Do not lose these” things. I got the box out, wedged in there behind Sharon’s seat, so half a dozen other things also had to come out. It wasn’t there. It was still dark so I used the flashlight that Linda had given me, the key fob was not to be found. I closed the car door and confirmed that the mystery key was still inside the car. Sharon suggested that it must have been in something that we took into the motel room with us, since we hadn’t had this problem the previous night when we turned in. And she was right. It was in my toiletries back that was in my travel sack for this road trip. I had stashed it there as one of the last things, not taking the time to put it in the box where it belonged.



Our airport shuttle driver picked us up at 3:30 in the morning to get to LAX for our flight to Fort Lauderdale. This goes into our growing file of “It seemed like a good idea at the time”. Since we weren’t sure where we’d be living when we booked the flights and the transatlantic cruise ends in Ft. Lauderdale we decided to book the flight to Venice from there (by the cruise line since it was much cheaper than what we found on line for a one way flight) and then book a round trip to Ft. Lauderdale once we knew where we’d be. It began raining hard while we waited for the hotel shuttle to pick us up, and we had to take cover under the overhead roadway. Fortunately, the driver figured that we wouldn’t be standing out in the open and we got to the hotel safe and almost dry. We dialed out for delivery, courtesy of Domino’s Pizza. I had a small ham pizza and Sharon had chicken nuggets. We both loved the chocolate lava crunch cake.



We were worried the next day at the airport when the flight ahead of ours left early (to avoid the bad weather moving in). Our boarding may have been delayed some, but our plane had been there from overnight, so it was already at the gate (even though departure was around 3 PM). Waiting at the gate, Sharon got up to throw out her remaining Sprite. She had tried to offer me a drink, but I had declined (so this is going to end up being my fault). He foot tangled with her carry-on (and the carry-on won). Down went Sharon. It was like being in Israel all over again, only this time I didn’t need to worry about it being Erin. She got carpet burns on a couple of fingers, but was otherwise okay. We got to JFK on time, and had a fairly uneventful flight to Venice. Passport and customs was a breeze with the only wait being for the Restrooms outside the luggage area. Well the wait was only on the Woman’s line which Sharon said had only 3 stalls and a very long line. I was beginning to get worried when she didn’t get back for so long. Luckily she warned me that some of the women were using the Men’s room which also had 3 stalls still it was a bit of a shock to have one come out of it when I went in. We added the international calling feature to my phone for the trip which worked well once I figured out how to call a local number. We were told to wait by the white tower just outside the airport, and a van from the Park hotel Annia arrived promptly at 12:30 PM as promised. There were several other people waiting in the same area for their hotel shuttles that will be on the same cruise and a few that will be going on the Zuiderdam. We arrived at the hotel very quickly and realized we probably could have walked to it while waiting for the shuttle. It is a charming hotel just outside the airport and everyone has been very friendly. The woman at the desk switched easily from Italian to English to talk with us and then to French to talk with the other couple that were on the shuttle van with us. She then walked us to the room and showed us where everything was. So now it’s time for a bit of a nap and then dinner (which isn’t until 7:30 since we’re in Europe). I can hardly wait to get on board and not need to worry about luggage for 24 days!

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25th September 2015

Wondering How you were doing
I was driving on Lower Springboard Rd. today & wondered where you were & how you were doing. It's good to hear from you
29th September 2015

St. Joe Statue
Hi Sharon, One of my students is trying to sell a house in Fla. & wants to know where you can buy a ST. JOE statue. Penny
30th September 2015

We bought ours on Amazon
29th October 2015

New students mom islooking at your house
I just got a new voice student and when I talked to his mom she had just been looking at your house & really liked it. She mentioned that they were looking & I mentioned that I had a student that was moving & had a beautiful home for sale & by coincidence she had just looked at it online. She liked the smaller garage because she does Rescue dog work & was thinking of insulating that area & housing her dogs there.Maybe the St, Joe is doing it's work.Hope things are going well.

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