In My Next 30 Years Part 5: Venice, Sleep Deprivation and Bad Pizza

You'll probably want to read part 4 before reading this one...

Eventually the train showed up and Chris and I boarded it. The train was great. The second floor of it was a surrounded on all sides by a big bubble shaped window, that allowed us to look around the area we were travelling through. It was beautiful and eventually we were travelling across a body of water into Venice.

We pulled into the train station and it was late morning, probably around 11 AM local. When we walked out of the train station, the view was stunning. I’ll try to find some pictures and scan them because it made us stop in our tracks. We were silent for a few minutes. Venice is pretty much everything you’ve been told. It’s old, beautiful and has lots of good-looking Italian women walking around.

We walked our way around the immediate area, never venturing much more than a mile away from the train station. We knew we had to catch a train at approx 5 PM to get back to the base in time. But there was plenty to see.

We did some shopping and I bought mom some plates that had pictures of Venice on them. They now hang on her dining room wall. I also bought my sister a copy of the Lion King Soundtrack in Italian. I’d already gotten her one in Portuguese. Chris and I bought these nerdy gondolier hats that screamed “We’re stupid American tourists” but we didn’t care. We wore them. His had the red tape and mine was blue.

We got hungry so we stopped at a small café right along the canals to get something to eat. The canal was about 6 inches to my right from where we sat. Chris ordered something really fattening and white. I ordered Italian Pizza (what else?). My meal wasn’t that good. Italian pizza, much to my chagrin, is very different and much more plain than American. It was mainly just the bread and a few peppers, a little cheese and some sauce thrown on top. It wasn’t very filling. But who cares? I was in Venice. It was more about the experience than the taste.

After that we took a ride on a boat on the canals. This wasn’t a gondola. We thought about that but decided against it for two reasons:

1. They were expensive.
2. It would look really gay to have two guys riding in one.

We took a regular boat and it took us up and down the canal. Something most people don’t know about Venice until they get there. The water is FILTHY.

Time passed quickly and we had to make our way back to the train station. We got back to the train station and took our last few pictures outside. Once inside, we were faced with a new problem: we couldn’t figure out which train would take us back to Aviano. We met another airman there who was having the same problem. Remember, I had to be back at work in the Azores the next day so I HAD to be on the flight back. We narrowed it down to 2 trains, made an educated guess and got on. At this point, I think we had been up about 28 hours straight. No sleep.

The train ride back was good but we couldn’t sleep then because we didn’t want to miss our stop. The ride back through the countryside was great at sunset. It ended up being the right train. We then took our bus back to Aviano and made it into the terminal on base in plenty of time.

We’d been up about 30-31 hours straight at this point. I remember sitting in the terminal, waiting on our names to be called to get on the plane, talking to Chris and nodding off in mid-sentence. He was doing the same.

We got on the place with our souvenirs and finally slept on the flight back. It had been about 35 hours before we finally got some sleep. It felt great. We got back on time and I “worked” the next day. By “work,” I mean I showed up on time and left on time. Not much was done in-between.

If you ever get the chance to visit Venice, even for 7 hours, do it. It’s a beautiful place.