Monthly Archives: July 2019

Hello friends,

I am unable to post from the ship as the internet is not strong enough. I can do words, but no photos. So I will try to keep telling our story, but without pictures (which I think are the best part) 😉

More later now that I know the challenges I have to get around.

Bette

Today, Bob, Mike and Bette walked around Venice, wandering through small streets and squares. We ended up at the Santa Maria de la Salute Church only to find it did not open until 3. We then took the vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal. We did some shopping for Mike since he and Cheri still had no luggage. After lunch on the ship, Bette and Cheri went shopping for clothes and cosmetics for her. Then the luggage was delivered!

We had our life boat drill and we sailed out of Venice. Dinner in Toscana. A win at trivia.

The day ended well.

We had three days in Venice. On the first one, because of all the flight delays we just walked around and then had dinner in a small restaurant in a square.

Our ship, Oceania Riviera, with Venice in the background as we were landing.

In the Piazza de San Marco

The first thing we did on the second day was tour the Doges Palace before transferring to our ship by water taxi. We had to dodge lots of gondolas on the way. After lunch we took the people mover to get into Venice and walked until we found the Jewish quarter. We took a tour of the 3 synagogues. It was very interesting. The three different ones were French, German and Ashkenazi.

From the Bridge of Sighs

Our beautiful suite on the ship

After a wonderful wedding for our son, Michael, and his beautiful bride, Dylan, last weekend we are finally off on our next adventure. Well, we thought we were off, but a series of events have bogged us down.

Our flight from Boston to Paris and then connecting on to Venice was due to leave at 7:06 PM. We actually left at 7:30 but did not actually fly until 8. This was somewhat problematic since our connection in Paris was only 70 minutes. When we landed in Paris, we thought we would be fine until our gate was not ready and then when it was ready we were in a remote area that took 15 minutes by bus to get us to the terminal. We did the run through the terminal, going through passport control and security and getting to our gate about 3 minutes too late to make the flight.

We are now waiting for our rebooked flight hoping that our bags have also been rebooked.

Our friends, Cheri and Mike Madsen, who we were meeting in Paris, had plane problems and ended getting rerouted directly to Venice. Unfortunately no one rerouted their bags. They have been told that the bags will get here tomorrow and be sent directly to the ship.

Upside, great shopping in Paris airport 😉

We hope this is the only “oops” we encounter.