An eventful trip - Part II - Lost Luggage and Lovely Trip

Continued from previous post..

As the bags started coming in, we looked at each one hopefully. As time passed and we hadn’t spotted even one of our three bags, the reality started sinking in. The last bag on the conveyor killed the last ray of hope that we clung to and we found ourselves in a line for lost luggage. There were about 7-8 people ahead of us so we thought we would be assisted in a few minutes. Well fifteen minutes later the line had not moved even an inch. Yep! We were in Italy! Two hours later we are at the counter giving all the baggage information to the helpful(yeah right!) lady. She looked into her system and said ,
“There is no information about your bags but no problem Sir, you should get them by tomorrow”
“If you don’t know where the bags are how can you be sure that they will arrive tomorrow?”
“No Problem Sir. They usually do arrive the next day”.
“But we leave for a cruise tomorrow. What if we don’t get them by tomorrow?”
“No Problem Sir. We send it to the next port of call “.
She said it so confidently, that one would be inclined to believe her but by this time we knew better. We decided to wait until the next morning to panic and start buying essentials. Reaching the hotel was a task because all the hotel information was in one of the bags we lost. All we remembered was the name of the hotel and the bus stop that we had to get down at. We got down at the right bus stop . It was in the middle of a circle with roads going out in all four directions. We got out of
the bus and stared in all directions. We knew it was a ten minute walk to the hotel so we did not want to head in the wrong direction. Our request for directions was mostly met with shrugs. Finally a gondolier pointed us in the direction of our hotel and we managed to reach it.

Our hotel was located on a canal right in the center of activity. We could get a glimpse of the canal from our room. It was beautiful! That evening we roamed through the streets of Venice. The weather was beautiful, the breeze was soothing, the water was calm. We walked along the canal, took a gondola ride, ate a leisurely Italian dinner. Apple had a ball just running around, chasing the pigeons, looking at the
boats . She would even sing “row , row, row your boat” every time she saw a new boat. She enjoyed the hustle and bustle and loved looking at the water and the boats.
The whole place was so lively and bursting with activity. People walking , boats passing by, hawkers selling their wares, dinners dinning by the canal side. There was a restaurant right next to our hotel. All the tables were outside by the canal, the building only contained the kitchen , storage etc. People sat there and ate leisurely dinner for hours. Every now and then a musician would stop by to entertain the diners.The activity continued late in the night. It was a sharp contrast to my neighbourhood which grows dark and quiet by 9.00 pm and Apple was quite mesmerised by it. In its own way the chaos and noise was very calming.
Apple and I stood at the entrance of our hotel watching all the activity while hubby
frantically called the airlines from our room. Apple who was still on United States time refused to go to the room and had to be dragged upstairs kicking and screaming at midnight.

The next morning after breakfast , the location of our bags still unknown, we decided to start shopping. We only had a couple of hours before we needed to head to the port. Diapers was first on the list. After asking around we finally found a supermarket called COOP. We knew we needed a lot of diapers since we would be at sea for 6 nights so we wanted to get a huge packet. In the diaper isle we picked up the biggest packet and were trying to figure out what size the diapers were and how many
the packet contained since all information was written in Italian. The packet had the number 16 on it but we thought “wait a minute, that can’t be right?, how can such a huge packet contain only 16 diapers?”. So we asked a few people and they said it contained 16. It turned out that the packet we were looking at contained adult diapers!. No wonder we were getting strange looks from the people we asked earlier!
Fortunately someone pointed that out to us before we bought anything. So with the
acquisition diapers and toiletries we set out to buy clothes. We were in a tourist area not a shopping area really so there were not many clothing shops. However there were a lot of small shops selling T-shirts that said ‘Venezia” , “Italia” or “I love Venice”. Fortunately we both had two pairs of pants in order to save time( and
money) we just bought a bunch of these T-shirts. Apple’s clothes were another thing. We searched and searched and finally found a shop for children’s clothing where we spent 150 euros on 4 clothing sets for which Iwouldn’t even spend $50 back home.
The funniest and most difficult part of the whole exercise was shopping for underwear. It was hard to explain to people what we needed. We finally found the right shop and even there we hit some stumbling blocks. Hubby must have pointed to the general area of his waist while trying to communicate that he needed underwear. The next thing we know the lady brings out a belt! We finally managed to get what we needed and then rushed to the port. While everyone was boarding the ship with huge suitcases, there we were... with a bunch of shopping bags in our hands!

The cruise was great though,we enjoyed the beautiful weather, pigged out on the food , danced to the great music and visited three beautiful ports i.e.Mykonos and Athens in Greece and Split in Croatia. (I promise to post pictures and information about
these places once I get a chance). We must have looked ridiculous roaming the streets of Athens wearing “I love Venice”Tshirts. Thankfully the there is no enmity between these two countries!

Apparently the airline had cancelled our return reservation as well. After a number of phone calls we were able to sort it out. I have to mention that Royal Caribbean made our lives easy by giving us free laundry , free phone calls to the airlines and some other stuff.

On our return to Venice, we found two of the three bags. The third one is still missing. Overall it was a great trip. Now we just have to fight with the airlines to recover some of the money that we ended up spending because of the lost bags. By the time we are through with them, we’d be needing another vacation. This time though we won’t be flying for sure!