Personal Post: Day 1: New York-Amsterdam-Venice

With the amount of time spent in transit, I had a lot of time to think about which part of the tour would count toward Day One and which would count toward Day Two. We had left New York at the end of Day One, and didn't arrive in Venice until almost the end of Day Two. Regardless, I've decided to count the transit time as Day One, and thereafter as Day Two.

Our arrival to JFK was about half an hour later than we had originally planned, but that wasn't even the half of it. As we waited behind twenty-some passengers in front of us, we found out that our flight had be delayed for two hours. Originally, we had an hour and a half of layover in Amsterdam before our flight onto Venice, but due to the delay in New York, they rescheduled our Venice flight. Upset as we were, we couldn't do much about it. We had a less-than-stellar meal at the food court, but at least KLM gave us $10 vouchers.

Finally, the flight departed New York sometime around 9pm. I had given up on looking at my watch by then. The flight was very much non-eventful. I slept sparingly, didn't eat the meals, and watched one movie (No Reservations). Arrival in Amsterdam was around 10am local time, making it a seven-hour flight.

We waited for a long time in Amsterdam. Our rescheduled flight for Venice wasn't going to leave until 2:30pm. We walked around the terminal, which felt more like a shopping mall than an airport. We added a Holland magnet to our ever-growing magnets of world destinations on our refrigerator door. Decorative lights were shining for the holidays, and people walked around shopping in between their flights. There was a woman who stood ten feet off the ground in a Christmas tree outfit and singing Christmas songs. There was a man dressed in a Santa suit walking around inside a Christmas tree. That guy scared the heck out of me.

After changing the gates a few times and sitting through another (albeit, much shorter) delay, we were on our way to Venice. Much to our surprise, our new seats were in business class, and that marked the first time my mom and I are anywhere but economy. The meal was so much better, there was so much more room in front of our knees, and even the flight attendant offered to hang up our coats! It was definitely a first. We flew through The Netherlands, Germany, parts of the Swiss Alps, and Northern Italy, en route to Venice.

Just before landing at the beautiful Marco Polo Airport, we got an aerial view of Venice in its lagoon. Welcome to Venice!