Wake up call at 6:00 … breakfast at 6:45 … water taxi (with two other couples) to the airport at 7:15. Our taxi picked us up at the special taxi ‘stand’ a few yards from the lobby. The depth of the step down into the boat depends on the tide. € 150 (today’s exchange rate is $1.12 = € 1) one way early in the morning … € 30 more than later in the day. Getting up early in a new time zone is always painful, for us anyway, but invariably worth it since seeing a new place in the morning before the town fully wakes up is a treat. This morning we saw delivery boats laden with all sorts of necessities, trash collection boats, laundry pick and delivery boats, and a few fellow travelers headed out of town.

Michelle Obama is arriving on the heels of our departure guaranteeing much disruption to the ordinary rhythm of a typical day here. No doubt she was following our adventure through the blog and decided to see what all the fuss is about. Yeah right.

Our flight was nonstop Venice to Newark, NJ. Dan used miles to upgrade us, so we spent a pleasant nine hours in business/first class watching movies, reading, eating, and dozing on and off. The joke was almost on us. We got to the airport early and had a lot of time to kill, so we settled in a little too comfortably and did not pay attention to the time or anticipate much of a wait at passport control. LONG does not adequately describe the line at passport control. Stressful story short, we got on the plane five minutes before the doors closed.

We had two hours in Newark, NJ to go through immigration and customs plus a flight delay of one hour, and then a 40 minute flight. We got home 18 hours after we woke up happy to be here but thrilled with the trip.