Venice Day 1

Due to severe thunderstoms, all airports were closed on the east coast Friday evening. The flight due in at 7:30, which would turn around and take us to LHR was diverted to Boston. Long story short, it didn,t come in until 11:30pm and our 9:05pm departure was delayed until 12:45. Given British Airways credit, the nornal turnaround time of 90 minutes was shorter, and the captain even came over to chat with us, and they served soda/water. Since we wouldn't make it over to Gatwick in time for our Venice flight, they booked us on the next flight out to Venice. It all ended well, but caused much confusion. After landing in LHR (finally) we had to go queue up to see about the new booking, get our bags, clear customs, get the bus and get to Gatwick. 45 minutes later, we are checking in at Gatwick, making our way through security and walking the necessary 5 miles (or so it seems) through the airport to our gate and then finally arrived at our gate when they started boarding. The woman who checked us in at Gatwick, told us our seats would be separate on the flight - we told her it didn't matter. She got on the phone, and made arrangements for us to have not only seats together but a window seat so we could see the beauty of flying into Venice. Well, it IS an awesome sight, but not when it is cloudy and rainy. Oh well, she tried!
2 hours later we arrived in Venice at 7:10pm. After clearing customs, finding out the bancomat at the airport wouldn,t give us any euros, we walked in the misty rain for 10 minutes to the dock to get the water bus to take us into the city. Somewhere around 10pm, after a bit of searching through many twisting calles (streets) we ended up at Casa Querini, our B&c. 15 min later we were at a nearby trattoria, Antica Sacrestina for dinner. We had only tea/coffee on the plane before landing at LHR, had planned for lunch at Gatwick, but no time for lunch - so we were starving! We had the spahetti house special, thick with cream, porcini mushrooms and truffles. grilled vegetables on the side (carrots, fennel, artichoke, asparagus, eggplant) and the required bottle of house wine. 2 hours later, well after midnight, we finally got to bed.
Written in Venice on Saturday, May 15, 2010: no internet access because Sandy is too cheap to pay $6/day for wi-fi access