Day 37 ( Friday 13Dec19) Venice to Dubai then onto Brisbane.

Today we begin the long journey home. It provokes mixed feelings as you could imagine. We have enjoyed the trip, as we have experienced many countries, places, cultures, foods and most importantly people. This was what we came for, to personally re-charge by experiencing life somewhere else. So we go home re-charged, ready to take up our lives again, but slightly changed from the experience. 

Again, we found people are people, despite where they come from. We shouldn’t generalise people by place and culture. The nice part is, on the whole, the people we have met along the way have been nice and happy for us to be in their country. We have been lucky,it seems that English is the new universal language in Europe, so communicating has not been difficult as we expected. Younger Europeans are very multi-linguistic with languages and generally multi cultural in outlook. We as a country, could learn from them.

 The other observation (like 11 years ago) is the age of everything- buildings, roads, landmarks and history. Europeans really embrace their history. We saw very few skyscrapers while in Europe (and all in Barcelona when we saw them and then no taller generally than 15 storeys), also Europeans tend to repurpose their older buildings (and not knock them down so developers can get richer) as in Australia. 

As Australians, we were certainly at a disadvantage with the exchange rate with 1 Australian dollar buying 61Euro cents. So if you come to Europe in the near future (or any other part of the western world), save up your money as you will need it. Our dollar has been artificially depressed by Government fiscal policy to ensure our exports can find markets. The impact is imports (90% of what we buy) and travel becomes expensive. 

Today is another rainy day, which is a pity because we have the whole morning before we are picked up water taxi by noon. Our flight leaves at 3:25pm local time so we have time. Venice in the wet is challenging because the cobblestones get slippery and generate puddles. 

Despite the rain and cold, Cos ventured out Railto Bridge and back. Very quick.

After a last minute check, the owner of Palazzo Schiavoni, helped us out to our water taxi to the Airport. We highly recommend the Palazzo Schiavoni https://www.palazzoschiavoni.com/ as it is comfortable, in good location, reasonablely priced and staff are fantastic. 

Travel to the airport by taxi is expensive (120€) but convenient given the rain.

Once at the airport, we navigated security (who had all the personality and charm you would expect) and painlessly through customs to our gate. 

We boarded the flight, and which went smoothly arriving in Dubai on time.

 Sadly for us, we were bused 15 minutes to Terminal 3, underwent more security scans including pat downs, and had a 20 minute walk to our gate. Once at our gate, more checks and bag checks. Interesting. The security was however very polite and professional so can’t really complain. Also poor Melissa also ate something (on previous flight) that didn’t agree with her, so she was feeling very out well.