From The Aeroport To Mestre, Venice

March 28, 2014June 14, 2014 / ludlumdrive / Leave a comment

Arriving in Venice, we were greeted by our tour manager, Ambra; beautiful italian name, it means Amber in English. We claimed our luggage and hop on the bus to Mestre, a suburb of Venice region and met Lucas, our bus driver. An interesting gentleman to say the least. Sorry, I don’t seem to find a picture of his. He reminds me of a younger french actor, Gerard Depardieu.

Silly me. I though we were going to have different tour guides and drivers for each of the cities we visited, which we did have local guides but were attached to the hips to Ambra and Lucas for the entire the trip. They were the main guides and no complains here. Well, at least from me. There is however, one or two people who were not happy. Oh well, you cannot satisfy everyone. And moving right along we did, discovering Italy we were on our way.

The weather was beautiful with bright sunshine and clear blue skies. It was hard to believe that we were actually in Italy after looking forward to this trip for more then a year. We had many pancakes scrambled eggs, sausage, orange juice breakfasts, count eight, garage sales and an Italian night dinner fundraiser to help us achieve our dream, but like troops, they came rushing supporting us all the way.

We finally arrived at Antony Hotel in Mestre, a suburb of Venice.

On The Road To Venice

January 19, 2014June 14, 2014 / ludlumdrive / Leave a comment

Like a clock, right after going through customs, we were greeted by a representative of Peter’s Way Tours Inc, the agency that made all the arrangements, “Buongiorno, Benvenuti”. Yeehh, rejoice we are in Italy! “Grazie”, we replied all at ounce. Trust me, we had took classes, bought tapes so we could master that perfect italian; oops, yeah right, I mean the perfect Italian not to get lost and stay lost!

The gentleman checked all our names against his list, if the passports checked and handed us over our name tags. Surreal, I have been to a few countries in my lifetime but never in a pilgrimage and it did not feel “like a tourist” until I was had that badge on my neck. To say that we were intoxicated, ecstatic, euphoric to be there is understatement.

Hooray, we have arrived.

It was exciting, I mean, you say Italy and you hear fashion, well aside its history, exhilarating to walk through the terminal and experience Italian fashion from the get go.

The agency representative directed us to a waiting bus right outside of the terminal that took us to a different side of the airport and few minutes later, we were boarding another plane to Venice.

Italy, We Went

November 12, 2013June 14, 2014 / ludlumdrive / Leave a comment

On Tuesday, October 9th, twenty three members of Our Lady Of The Lakes Choir, yes I sing in a choir, plus nineteen parishioners departed Miami International Airport on an overseas journey, via Alitalia Airlines at 4:15 PM bound for Italy. They woke us up at around 1:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, approximately 6:00AM in Italy, for breakfast and not long after that we landed in Rome.

Hooray, we arrived. Yeeehh!

It was hard to believe that we were actually in Italy after looking forward to this trip for more then a year. We had many pancakes scrambled eggs, sausage, orange juice breakfasts, count eight, garage sales and an Italian night dinner fundraiser to help us achieve our dream, but like troops, they came rushing supporting us all the way.