Government, Travel and Venice

                                                   BLAME THE GOVERNMENT

       After 27 hours on the road, air, train and water we finally arrived in Venice, tired but not ready to give into the jet lag that you experience when you pass over several time zones. Needless to say Lynda showed some fatigue on the 'vaporetto'.

       Things were going too well! That's what I told myself after we got through check-in and security at Austin's Bergstrom airport in fifteen minutes, arrived at JFK early and only had to walk five gates down the road to our gate for Milan. I thought too soon and jinxed myself.
       I often get hunches, so I decided to try an ATM card based on an account we only use for travel in a JFK ATM. It shut us out saying that we can't withdraw from our checking account. Finding this out and after my heartbeat came back close to normal I called the number on the card. I had already, as I usually do, called all the potential cards I might use on the trip telling them that purchases might be made in these countries on these dates. It seems like when you don't use the ATM card for a while they deactivate it. Thank God that I checked since it was to be the one we would use the most on the trip. After getting it reactivated and checking it again I was satisfied that this was just one of those travel bumps in the road you get.
       Thanks to the 'sequester' resulting from the government's inability to rule effectively and it's effect on air traffic controllers we sat in the terminal for an extra hour because they didn't want us to sit on the tarmac. That was nice of AA but after we finally boarded we sat for another hour due to the amount of uncontrolled traffic and a huge fog bank that enveloped the airport around 6:00 pm. Needless to say we were two hours late arriving in Milan.
       That caused us to miss the train we had reserved tickets on to Venice. Originally I had booked a car out of Milan but cancelled it because I thought it was stupid to sit a car for three or four days in Venice, paying for both the rental days and the parking which is dear. On the train we were informed by a nice young man that today was a three headed holiday monster in Venice. They celebrate the day where the Allies liberated Italy from Nazi rule; they celebrate the patron saint of Venice, St. Mark and they celebrate a day in which the Venetians and the Turks fought over Cyprus, turning the white roses in to red ones with Venetian blood. The city was packed and road traffic made Austin on I-35 look tame. I was blessed to take the train.
       I knew our B&B in Venice had no elevator, but did not know it was five flights of stairs. My ortho doctor would have had a cardiac episode watching me carry all our luggage up those stairs, not once but twice. It was not until I was finished did I realize that my brace was still in my small backpack.
        We had a nice meal, celebrated a psuedo Communion, walked around a little and made our plans for tomorrow. The islands of Murano and Burano are beckoning us.