Day 1: The flight to Venice and our first night in Italy

This blog will be composed of journal entries that Nate and I wrote while we were on our honeymoon.  We hope you enjoy!

Our flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam was very nice.  We asked to be seated in an exit row so we could have more leg room (which Nate really appreciated).  There were personal TV screens at each seat which we could watch movies on or play video games.  There was a flight-tracker too which was very nice.  We stayed awake all the way up the Atlantic coast.  We started to break towards the ocean at Massachusetts - where we could see the unique "curl" in the land that juts out into the ocean.  The meals on the flight were pretty impressive too.  We were flying with KLM (who is associated with Delta).  We had chicken, green beans and rice for dinner.  We had told the flight attendant (after he saw the Italy Source paperwork) that we were headed to Italy for our honeymoon.  So he asked if we wanted some champagne - we said "yes" of course.  He also gave us this porcelain Dutch house which has homemade Dutch liquor in it.

Our champagne

We finally arrived to Amsterdam's airport and had a couple of hours to kill before flying out to Venice.  We were exhausted after the flight - we didn't get much sleep at all.  And it was very uncomfortable.  But the breakfast on the plane was really good!  Egg/cheese sandwich, fruit, granola and yogurt...

We finally found our terminal and found a seat and I immediately fell asleep.  When we finally boarded the plane, we took our seats and were off again.

The plane had rows of three seats on either side of the aisle.  Once we realized no one else was on our row, Nate laid across the seats and went to sleep with his head on my lap.  They gave us drinks and sandwiches for a snack.  We both ended up falling asleep quickly.

 We were woken up by the pilot telling us to look out the windows at the Alps.  It was absolutely breath-taking!  They were capped with snow and were spotted with cloud cover.

The Alps

Before we knew it we were approaching the Marco Polo airport in Venice.  We arrived at 4:50 pm on May 25th.  As we flew in, we saw the Venice island out the right side of the plane.

Venice Island

It was so very exciting!!  We were giddy when we got off the plane!  We went to luggage claim and our bags were right there waiting on us!  We walked out the doors to see a group of people holding up signs with names on them.  We finally spotted ours - "Mrs. Brittany Lawing"!  (They didn't have Nate's name because I was the one that did most of the communication with the Italian travel agency).  There were two Italian gentlemen waiting for us.  One of them asked for my bag and they directed us to our car...a Mercedes Benz.

They loaded our luggage and then we were off.  It was so surreal having this happen to us.  The car was amaaaazing!!  They drove us to the furthest point into the Venice island that you can take a car.  Then we got out and our transfer got us a water taxi.  It was an incredible ride down the Grand Canal.  We passed the most amazing houses/churches/museums just seemingly floating in the water!  This was truly the most spectacular thing I had ever seen!  There were boats galore!

He took us right under the famous Bridge of Sighs - construction was being done on either side of the bridge so the view wasn't the greatest.  The bridge was built in 1602 and connected the old prisons to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace.  Rumor has it that the view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge name, given by Lord Byron in the 19th century, comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice out the window before being taken down to their cells. 

We pulled up right to our hotel where a bell-hop was waiting to help us with our bags.  The transfer came inside with us and helped us check in.  Our bags were brought to our room for us and when we got to the room we were more than excited!  We had a pretty nice view of the terrace below.  We immediately took showers because we felt disgusting!!  And then we took some time to relax.  We then decided to walk around and explore.  It was very confusing at first but we finally figured it out.  We walked around the alley-ways and over the bridges aiming to get lost.  We found a gelato stand and decided to try it out!  This is Italy's form of icecream.  It was very good!

Our first gelato of the trip

We finally found a place where we could get on the internet - I sent out a Facebook status letting everyone know we made it to Venice safe and soundly.  Allison, my sister-in-law, happened to be online so we talked for a little bit.  We then headed to Saint Mark's Square and on our way we grabbed some dinner.  We stopped at this little place and had some awesome pizza and wine.  Nate had cheese and salami and I had cheese and black olive.

After dinner we made it to Saint Mark's Square which was really close to our hotel.  The water was very high that evening and was flooding the square.  Apparently this is normal for them.  It was kind of fun though.  We took our shoes off and walked around in it.  It was surprisingly chilly!  We listened to some bands play music and just admired the great architecture surround us.

















We found a place that sold Martini & Rossi Asti (which is our favorite champagne!)  We bought it and took it back to the hotel and celebrated.  We sat out on the terrace and watched gondolas go by.