Made it to Venice!

We flew overnight from Chicago O’Hare to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Air France. We knew we were leaving the U.S. just sitting at the gate waiting to board with all the French speakers surrounding us. We had a long layover, so I caught the last episodes of a series I had been watching at home. It was enough of a mind break that I forgot that we hadn’t even left Chicago yet!

We got champagne and a nice dinner in Premium Economy, while I watched a French movie with subtitles. I started another one, but I kept closing my eyes and missing the subtitles, so I figured I could probably actually be able to sleep, so I turned it off, donned the eye mask and earplugs provided by the airline, and actually managed to get quite a bit of shuteye! I usually can’t sleep on the overnight flights, so it surprised me when I woke up just as breakfast was being served with about an hour left to go to Paris!

Unfortunately, we were not stopping to visit Paris but just to change flights on to Venice. As we were shuffling through the jetway onto the plane, we watched a maintenance guy maneuver a set of stairs to the pilot’s side window (watching while he just about hit one of the pitot tubes on the side of the fuselage – very important for flying the plane!). He then carefully wiped and picked off something from the window and rubber gasket, before proceeding to put a strip of clear packing tape over the gasket and the window… (Ken and I were wondering if the window would blow out during the flight and kill the pilot…?!) We saw a large bloody splatter just above the window – the airplane’s version of a bug hitting the car windshield! We ended up leaving about 15 minutes late, and the pilot said they had hit a bird on the way in.

Ken hadn’t slept so well on the overnight flight, so he’s been napping since we got to our cabin, while I’ve been exploring our Viking Sky cruise ship. There are just under 1000 passengers and about 400 crew members. This is its maiden voyage season, and it has been beautifully designed in the Scandinavian style, with a lot of touches of Norway, including one woman greeting us at the door in a beautiful Norwegian bunad (folk costume)! There are so many places to eat or to sit and enjoy the onboard musicians throughout the day, that it doesn’t feel like there are so many people on board. In fact, as I write this at 6:30 pm in the Atrium, beautiful piano music is being played.

We are docked a little ways from Venice, and can see it in the distance across the water, so it is about a 45-minute boat ride to get to the city, which we will explore tomorrow before setting sail at 2:30 pm for the Dalmatian coast, the eastern shore of the Adriatic.

(In case the photos didn’t work, I’ll try to figure it out for the next episode!)