Aug 12 - Venice & Nerviano

It was an amazing flight.  Perhaps 100 seats were occupied out of 300+.  I'd selected a seat in a 2-by, window, and I had those two seats by myself.  After takeoff, I could have relocated to a middle group of three but I stayed where I was.

Being able to put my head down, I slept a lot of the flight.  It's never deep uninterrupted sleep, but it is sleep.  As a result, I felt fairly good upon arrival in Venice, better than usual.

We landed at noon, a half-hour early and by 1pm I had my rental car -- that's pretty good.  It was the most painless rental ever, with Europcar, no one trying to up-sell, the car available etc.  It's never the exact car that you chose; it's always one of the same class.  Instead of a Peugeot 308, I have a Fiat 500. It actually drives pretty well.  They also didn't have any manual transmission cars, so I have an automatic.  It works.  Perhaps because the booking was through rentalcars.com they don't try to do the up-sell.  They also knew that I had full insurance coverage, so no sale there.  I already had my own Garmin, nothing there.  Pretty straightforward.

The car has some damage on the right side but that's already noted on the rental agreement.  I do have to say that the Italians have proven to be the most efficient !

It was an easy, mostly Autostrade drive to my hotel.  I stopped a couple of times.  As I got to the hotel, there was Jerry walking.  He'd been re-routed as there were problems in NY airports so he ended up flying United to Munich then Luftansa to Milan.  His bike is still out there somewhere; hopefully that will show up shortly.

After getting into the room, he and I headed to a grocery store to pickup food. We had that for dinner, joining Hamid and Shab in the hotel grounds. We called it a night pretty early but I was awake around 4:30 and am now in the lobby, not wanting to disturb Jerry.  It seems like I'm already time-adjusted, but I'm sure that will catch up with me.

Today ... don't know.  I'll catch Mass at the church down the road, have breakfast, put the bike together, get out for a short ride to ensure that it works, perhaps go to the airport with Jerry to see if his bike has shown up ... we'll see.

Onward !