The girl had her birthday recently and I decided that a trip to Venice would put me in the good books. We arrived with a few hours to spare in order to make good use of the lounge at the airport. It wasn't until we got through customs that we were told our flight would be delayed from 7 until 10pm.Not wanting to miss a minute of enjoying the weekend we did the only thing we new would lessen the annoyance - hit the booze in the lounge. Most of the flights were delayed that day because of an emergency landing so the lounge was fairly full. In spite of this we manged to grab a great window seat near the bar and promptly went about our business.
A few drinks later more bad news hit us with our flight being delayed until 1am. Again not wanting to put a damper on things we grabbed more vintage wine and cheese. We noticed that more than half the flights for that evening had been cancelled so a bad feeling was building up from within.
The Girl was very agitated and was checking the board frequently to find out when ours would be cancelled which was fortunate when for some reason our flight got brought forward. In typical style when you booze it before travel we were now late and had 5 mins to get to our departure gate.
Fortunately for us most passengers were in the same boat so the gate was held until all the passengers arrived. We took off and 2 hours later arrived at 2am in a very humid Venice. Because of the late arrival the trains were closed and no taxis were around.
Earlier in the week I had debated on pre-booking a rather expensive water taxi that thankfully I favoured in order to spoil the girl. Upon exiting the arrivals hall we were greeted by an empty airport. We made our way over to a closed taxi desk that had a man telling people there were no taxis available.
The Girl spied a note stuck to the top of his desk with my name and a phone number on it. We dialled the number and after a brief exchange was told to head to the wharf our water taxi would be there shortly.
A few of our fellow passengers questioned whether hitching a ride was likely but my response being the boat was only able to accommodate 2 people. We had a short wait at the wharf before our boat arrived. The taxi was an impressive vessel and had room for about 12 people. The chirpy driver led us on board and grabbed our bags. As we pushed off from the wharf we saw the same passengers waving as they hurried along the wharf to try and get a lift. And in true Venician style we continued on our way in a romantic ride for 2.
