Lufthansa. German efficiency, good design on the cup holders, free wine, good food, but very tight seats on this flight. Not only that, but the dear old lady in the seat in front of me, mind you all of 4 feet tall, felt it her god given, inalienable right to put her seat all the way back the minute we reached cruising altitude. I swear the top of her seat was 6” inches in front of my face. I had to lift my magazine up in order to get the light to shine on it. Not comfortable. Jene caught the women in the seat next to the dear old lady by crossing her legs before the seat came back, and verbal sparring ensued. Jene won, the dear old lady got the picture and they were a bit more considerate with their reclining angle from dinner on. The flight went fine, we actually got some sleep, and arrived in Frankfurt without incident. Made our connection after a 6 mile hike, and encountered a lot of folks heading for our same cruise. We made like the newly weds we are and only had eyes for each other, but it was fun to eavesdrop on everyone else chatting about their cabins, the cruise review web sites they had visited and their opinions of the ship (ranging from I can’t wait to I am not so sure about this…). We had to wait on the tarmac for a bit while they found the luggage of the folks who didn’t get through passport control, but finally arrived in Venice.
Venice, canals, romantic street, beautiful vistas and a luggage scrum that rivals any New York Airport when both the Yankees and Mets are playing in the world series. For that matter, quite a few of the folks proclaiming “Oh my God, will you look at this zoo...Larry, do you see our bags!?” sounded as if they walked off the A train. Dropping my usually polite exterior, I got my New York on and waded in, got our bags and we made a hasty retreat. As we walked away, some poor lady from Topeka asked “How on earth did you get your bags?” “I’m a New Yorker,” I replied. You can take the boy out of the state…
From there we were the property of Princess Cruises. Helped some folks onto the bus, made it through check in very quickly, saw our first casualty as some poor lady tripped over the velvet rope stanchion, and then had to listen to some more people complain that we had to walk back down the stairs before we could get on second bus to get to the ship (there was an elevator in plain site). The ship is great, brand spanking new, very elegant, and basically a floating bar. What could be better? Our room is just fine, a little small, but that is to be expected. We have a balcony which is great, except when our next door neighbor lights up the nastiest stogie I have ever had the pleasure to whiff. They are very nice however, and cooed over the fact that we are newly weds.
Hit the buffet (mediocre) and then explored the ship. We got our luggage after a few hours and then hit the showers. Then we met our steward, Petsa (pronounced Pizza) from Thailand, who got us the robes and towels we needed, although we punted on the bed turn down. Dinner was the grill- very mediocre, followed by a trip to the hot tub while they showed Pavoratti on the giant screen at the top of the ship. We met some guy from Colorado and made the mistake of announcing that we had managed to wrangle a direct flight to Frankfurt. Apparently he had arrived in Italy by way of Christ Church New Zealand or some such place and was quite put out that we had gotten the deal. We will keep that to ourselves for the rest of the trip. He went off to look for his Mom, and we decided to call it a night.
Now, in case you are wondering, we are not the youngest guests on the cruise. We saw three children, and one teenager. Then comes us. We are constantly being smiled at and cooed over as the obvious newly weds. As we walked by one couple, she proclaimed that she hoped she could sit with us and hear all about our wedding. I don’t think she realized we could hear her, as she was leaning into her husband, but whatever. This is truly not a problem, as like any newlyweds, we only have eyes for each other.
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