Destination Venice
As I handed over my project at work to another writer on Thursday, September 11, and tied up other loose ends, I felt an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. I couldn’t believe that in a few hours from then (at the stroke of midnight, actually), I would be at the airport with my mom waiting to head off on a whirlwind tour of Europe for 11 days.
I battled sleep at the Chennai airport watching the other travellers and killing time. Our flight was scheduled for departure at the ungodly hour of 4.15 am. Numerous caffeine fixes later, I heard the announcement, “All passengers boarding flight ___ for Dubai, your flight has been delayed”. Damn. Double Damn. This didn’t seem like a very good start.
I kept wandering around. My mom chose to remain seated and observe the people around, trying to locate other passengers who might be travelling with us on the package tour. We had been informed by our travel agent that there were 4 other passengers from Chennai and that we might be able to identify them by the bags they carried: The complimentary hand baggage provided by the tour operators. Of the four, one was a mother-daughter duo and the other was a lady and a young man, we were told.
Our flight was to stop over at Dubai and then proceed to Milan. I did notice a short lady with frizzy hair and a harried expression who had the aforementioned bag, but she was heading for Kenya. Not Milan.
After a LOT of time later, we found that our flight was only delayed by half hour. I felt waves of relief wash over me. I’d been seriously worried since we had a connecting flight from Dubai to Milan to board and if our first flight were to be too delayed, we might end up missing the connecting flight and that would throw our plans out of gear.
Once we boarded the flight, I used the warm wet towel that the air hostess handed us and tried to wipe the fatigue off my face. I dozed fitfully. Once we landed in Dubai, we literally ran through the airport so as not to miss our connecting flight. Luckily, for us, we didn’t.
A 6.5-hour flight later, we landed in Milan. While I had found the Dubai airport sterile, cold, and almost clinical, the airport at Milano seemed warm and welcoming. After all the formalities were over, we made our way to Exit 7. A board saying “Uscita” marked the exit. My mom and I struggled with all our baggage and stood at the exit.
I was just about to call up the tour manager and give him a piece of my mind when a genial man with a big smile on his face approached us. Seeing that he was Indian, I jumped to the wrong conclusion that he was our tour manager. It turned out to be a co-passenger on our trip. He had been waiting at Milan for the past 4 hours. Alarmed that the rest of the trip was going to continue in the same vein with delays and halts everywhere, I shared my apprehension with aforesaid genial man, Ganesh.
It turned out that the driver of our tour bus was present at the airport and was blissfully seated inside the bus, happily unaware of all the stressed-out passengers searching for the bus. And since he couldn’t speak a word of English, communication was a moot point.
We called up the tour manager and found out the exact number of passengers who had to board the bus and consequently the number of people we had to wait for. After what seemed like an eternity, the rest of the passengers made their way to the bus and we started off.
However, our streak of bad luck was determined to follow us for a bit longer. The bus broke down not once but twice, until we changed buses and reached our hotel in Venice sometime at nightfall. We found that the tour manager had left our dinner in our rooms and gone to sleep! This irked one of our co-passengers Padu, who woke up the manager and blasted him. My mom and I were too tired to take part in this heated exchange and we went to our room only to collapse on the bed.
As I handed over my project at work to another writer on Thursday, September 11, and tied up other loose ends, I felt an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. I couldn’t believe that in a few hours from then (at the stroke of midnight, actually), I would be at the airport with my mom waiting to head off on a whirlwind tour of Europe for 11 days.
I battled sleep at the Chennai airport watching the other travellers and killing time. Our flight was scheduled for departure at the ungodly hour of 4.15 am. Numerous caffeine fixes later, I heard the announcement, “All passengers boarding flight ___ for Dubai, your flight has been delayed”. Damn. Double Damn. This didn’t seem like a very good start.
I kept wandering around. My mom chose to remain seated and observe the people around, trying to locate other passengers who might be travelling with us on the package tour. We had been informed by our travel agent that there were 4 other passengers from Chennai and that we might be able to identify them by the bags they carried: The complimentary hand baggage provided by the tour operators. Of the four, one was a mother-daughter duo and the other was a lady and a young man, we were told.
Our flight was to stop over at Dubai and then proceed to Milan. I did notice a short lady with frizzy hair and a harried expression who had the aforementioned bag, but she was heading for Kenya. Not Milan.
After a LOT of time later, we found that our flight was only delayed by half hour. I felt waves of relief wash over me. I’d been seriously worried since we had a connecting flight from Dubai to Milan to board and if our first flight were to be too delayed, we might end up missing the connecting flight and that would throw our plans out of gear.
Once we boarded the flight, I used the warm wet towel that the air hostess handed us and tried to wipe the fatigue off my face. I dozed fitfully. Once we landed in Dubai, we literally ran through the airport so as not to miss our connecting flight. Luckily, for us, we didn’t.
A 6.5-hour flight later, we landed in Milan. While I had found the Dubai airport sterile, cold, and almost clinical, the airport at Milano seemed warm and welcoming. After all the formalities were over, we made our way to Exit 7. A board saying “Uscita” marked the exit. My mom and I struggled with all our baggage and stood at the exit.
I was just about to call up the tour manager and give him a piece of my mind when a genial man with a big smile on his face approached us. Seeing that he was Indian, I jumped to the wrong conclusion that he was our tour manager. It turned out to be a co-passenger on our trip. He had been waiting at Milan for the past 4 hours. Alarmed that the rest of the trip was going to continue in the same vein with delays and halts everywhere, I shared my apprehension with aforesaid genial man, Ganesh.
It turned out that the driver of our tour bus was present at the airport and was blissfully seated inside the bus, happily unaware of all the stressed-out passengers searching for the bus. And since he couldn’t speak a word of English, communication was a moot point.
We called up the tour manager and found out the exact number of passengers who had to board the bus and consequently the number of people we had to wait for. After what seemed like an eternity, the rest of the passengers made their way to the bus and we started off.
However, our streak of bad luck was determined to follow us for a bit longer. The bus broke down not once but twice, until we changed buses and reached our hotel in Venice sometime at nightfall. We found that the tour manager had left our dinner in our rooms and gone to sleep! This irked one of our co-passengers Padu, who woke up the manager and blasted him. My mom and I were too tired to take part in this heated exchange and we went to our room only to collapse on the bed.
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