Day 28 - Switching countries and Family members

6-10

So I managed to lug my butt out of bed this morning for our last morning of sight-seeing before we had to catch the Alilaguna (the water bus) to the airport. We got on the vaporetto to go down to the Frari church and our boat driver must have been friends with the other one coming from the other way because all the sudden the other one honked at us, “Beep bip bip beep beep.” And our driver honked back, “Beep beep.” It kind of made my morning. So we went down and saw the Frari Church which was beautiful with lots of pictures. There was one relief of the crucifixion and there were baby angels around it crying. They were so adorable! They were rubbing their little eyes and looking all sad just like real babies. I thought that was pretty great even though it wasn’t by anyone famous. We tried to go to the Scuola San Rocco but it was closed until 2 so we had to nix that idea and decided to go to a museum called the Ca’ Rezzonico. It had a lot of pictures and some 17^th century furniture. My favorite picture was where this guy put all sorts of physical impossibilities into the picture to make it more picturesque. The best part was that if it hadn’t been pointed out to me, I never would have noticed. I think the big one was that he put shadows coming off onto the Grand Canal from buildings on both sides of it, it really did look great that way though.

After all of that fun we headed back up to San Marco square. The weather was beautiful today, unlike every other day, and so it was jam packed. After muscling through the mob, we got over to our side of the square and went to see the little church our vaporetto stop is named for. It had these enormous pictures all over the walls and into part of the dome. They were so big! We ended up getting kicked out because they were about to start a service but we got to see it for about 10 minutes. It was my last Italian Church that I got to see. Sad day. We trooped over to the pizzeria near that hotel to grab some lunch and then got one last gelato before grabbing our bags from the hotel and heading for the Alilaguna stop. We got there with plenty of time and I got the tickets no problem and then I, our fearless leader, led us onto the platform to wait 5 minutes for the boat to come. We waited and I saw an Alilaguna going to right way but it didn’t stop at our platform, it stopped at the one next to us so I dismissed it saying, “THIS is the platform, I know it, another must be coming.” Wrong. That was our boat, and we missed it. The next one didn’t come for another half hour but we were on the right platform for that one. The really sad thing is that I had checked out the correct platform and everything earlier, before we went to San Zaccaria (the little church we went to last) and I still managed to choose the wrong one. Silly Sara. Good thing we had plenty of time so the extra half hour wasn’t a big deal. We got through security with minimal issues and waited the hour for our plane to get going.

The plane was on time, which made me happy because I had a 50 minute layover in Munich and I really didn’t want to miss my second plane. We got fruit cups on this one with funny little utensils. It had a fork thing on one end and a spoon on the other and a knife smaller than the combo thing. So we landed and all the sudden I realize the plane has stopped in the middle of the tarmac and there is a stair thing coming towards the side of the plane. All I can think is, “Awesome, I have 30 minutes to find my plane and I have to spend half of it playing frogger with airplanes.” Which, of course, was not the case, they brought out a bus thing and once everyone was off the plane totted us to the terminal. My connecting flight was actually in the same part of the airport as where they let us off so it really was a fairly stress-free connection. It helped that I had Mom there worrying for me so I was able to stay calm and unfrazzled in an attempt to make her worry a little less. I got to the gate before they even started boarding and got on the flight 15 minutes later to sit in my window seat. We landed in Hamburg on time and I got of the plane eventually. My seat was at the back so it took a while. Then I got my bag which is just such a joy to find on the luggage carousel because it is so bright I never have to worry about missing it! I got the bag and then I went out the exit and found Abby and Hendrik waiting out there for me. Ab insisted that Hendrik roll my suitcase for me which was nice but then when he went to haul it into the car I suddenly felt really self-conscious about every kilogram in it. He just made some comment about how it really was lighter than Mom’s and I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me for how heavy it was or if he was being 100% serious. I still haven’t really decided.

So he went off to a celebration party for his soccer team and me and Abs went to the supermarket to get groceries for the week. You know, I don’t think I gave myself enough credit for how much Italian I had picked up until I was looking at all of the shelves of mysterious products. I swear all I could see were umlauts. Luckily Abby wasn’t as helpless as me—though I did manage to spot the Rosemary (Rosmarin) in the spices shelved alphabetically. I know, I’m pretty spectacular. Oh, funny note. On both of my flights they spoke German. All German I have every learned abandoned me as soon as I got anywhere near a German speaker. I was racking my brain for a please, thank you, good day, anything. By the end of the second flight I was starting to remember danke, guten tag, guten morgen. At least I didn’t do anything where I needed to apologize to someone else on the plane. So we finished up at the market and came home. Abby was telling me about how she had to make this dessert for her future sister-in-law’s baby’s baptism party thing that we are going to on Monday and she was worried because the brownie mixes here taste really awful to her.

So at 11 at night, we started making cupcakes: chocolate and raspberry. We are unsure if either taste good but we decided that we’d have to ask Hendrik anyway because the brownies she thought were so gross were a hit with his friend. After making the desserts I showered and went to bed.

I realized while I hate the stress of flying I really love the view from the plane. Seeing the German countryside as we flew in was really neat. There were crop fields sort like at home but here they have so many trees, densely packed trees. It was so pretty. The best part of the flight was looking out at all the clouds. They just look so soft and cold. On the way home from the airport Ab pointed out the shipyards and this place where they make airplanes. There was a beluga plane that had a huge head thing above the plane (that is a really bad description but I really just need my hands on this one..) so that it can fly plane part to this factory. It was really funny looking but I thought it was sort of cute. Ok. Enough for today. Night.