Day 41 Homeward Bound
Today we said good bye to our characterful Trieste home. It has been an amazing place to stay. Jeanette reckons it feels like you are living in a movie.
Our car picked us up spot on 10:00am and we had a very comfortable two hour drive through the beautiful countryside to Venice airport. Check in went smoothly .
We had got through Security and had a couple of hours to kill before takeoff so we decided to have a light lunch. We found a little cafe a little off the main pedestrian route. There were about 15 tables so we grabbed a vacant one.
The waiter was buzzing around but when you looked closely he was ignoring the customers and was focused on collecting all the menus and removing them off to the kitchen.
I noticed a couple of tables where potential customers had given up the struggle and just left without ordering, but being made of sterner stuff I cornered him and demanded a menu. He went out to the kitchen and got one but when we finally managed to corner him again, he claimed he couldn’t understand what we wanted. I was pointing at the item on the menu we wanted and holding up two fingers. Fortunately a waitress saw our difficulty, came over and took our order.
After some time had passed the waitress came back with a paper bag with bread in it. Another ten minutes passed and for something to do we each got a piece of bread out of the paper bag, put some olive oil on it and ate it. A while later the first waiter showed up and started clearing our plates away. A tug of war then ensued as he was trying to take my plate and I wasn’t letting go. Eventually he gave up and stormed off to the kitchen. We finally got our meal about 5 minutes after that. I tell you, Faulty Towers could learn a few pointers from this place.
The flight to Dubai on a Boeing 777 was a little cramped but comfortable enough. At Dubai, however, our fun started as we were dropped at Terminal C and our onward flight left from Terminal A . Getting to A involved a full Security screen (a belts and watches off affair) when we arrived, a fifteen minute trip around the airport on a shuttle bus whose departure location had been really well hidden, followed by another full Security screen on arrival at Terminal A, followed by a full physical search of our carry-on bags at the departure lounge.
Our flight home on a beautiful A380-800 has been very comfortable . We have had a great crew, good food and even got a few hours sleep.
It has been a fantastic trip but we are very glad to get home.
Hardys’ Travels 