Getting to Italy

We left Thursday around noon and flew to Philly.  I was post-call and had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before so I slept for about 1.5 hours on this flight.  Everyone was well-behaved.  About an hour layover in Philly allowed us to charge our devices a little and snack on some hot pretzels and then it was time to board our international flight.  Trevor was excited because we were on an Airbus and he had just learned about the huge Airbus plane that is being made that has a gym and bedrooms on it.  Our plane was nothing like that - just a really large version of a normal plane.  We were four across the center.

The plane was about an hour late taking off because there was a lot of international traffic at that time of evening and we were 20th in line.  Then, a small jet (looked private) had to land without its front landing gear and they closed both runways while they cleaned that up.  It was really hard to see it because we were in the middle of the plane.  We could see a plane on the runway with its nose slanted down surrounded by emergency vehicles.

After all that drama we finally took off around 7:30 pm Eastern time.  The kids and I settled in to watch Paddington Bear and we were served dinner.  The kids did not really enjoy dinner (some chicken with a sweet sauce with rice and veggies or a pasta with cheese sauce with overcooked broccoli and red bell peppers) but they give you enough extras (bread, cheese and crackers) that they made a meal out of it.  When the movie was almost finished, the kids and I took some Benadryl and tried to settle into sleep at around 1030.  At that point I had moved to sit between the kids so they could lay all over us while sleeping if necessary.  It worked pretty well for Drew who managed to fall asleep after she found a comfortable position to lay in.  Turns out that red wine and Benadryl for Christy make her extremely tired but give her a terrible case of restless leg syndrome.  For about an hour and a half I honestly thought I was going to lose my mind.  My legs were driving me crazy and I desperately needed to get up and walk around but I was so tired and the kids were laying on me.  Meanhwhile, Trevor can't fall asleep either (despite feeling really tired) and then gets the hiccups.  Finally around 1230 when he is in tears I get him comfortably tucked in with his head on my lap and my legs started to calm down and then we fell asleep.  They woke us up around 830 local time (which would have been 230 to us (or 130 if still on Central time) for a breakfast of muffins and yogurt.  Kids were NOT happy about having to wake up but then we landed, whizzed through customs and boarded the Aliliguna Orange Boat to get from Marco Polo airport to Venice proper.  I was so tired that I felt like I was rocking at sea - my equilibrium was off. 

We met our lovely host Alessandra at the Aliliguna stop and were shown to our apartment which was clean and ready for us at 1100, thank God.  It is a lovely 3 BR apartment with 1.5 baths.  The kids were beyond tired so at 1230 we all took a 2 hour nap.  I'll save our actual Venice adventures for the next post.  Time for me to go to bed.