We are here!

After flying forever, we watched the sun come up, then flew over the Alps and finally arrived in Venice! Oh Happy Days! The first stop was a lovely lunch at Osteria del Baccala, in Stra. It was great. Then on we drove to Ferrara. our first leg of the journey. Ferrara is flat like PA, with corn fields and our hotel. Tomorrow on to morruzze! Melissa
I found that when flying it is wonderful to wear a very cheap fashionable scarf and use it to cover up the fact that you have a sports bra on, covers the oil that was dripping from the airplane pasta, dry your hands after trip to the bano, and also use it as a face mask when the person across from you is sneezing into the atmosphere! Never leave home without one! Mary
Cross one off the fear "bucket list": getting stuck in the Easy Pass lane on the turnpike. We managed to get both of our cars in that lane here
as we entered the Autostrada (A13). Oh well, we didn't want to back up into all that wild, rush hour traffic coming "down on us" so Herb called out "turista!" and an attendant opened the gate to let us in. Great! But what would happen when we got to the other end of our ride? Well, there I was faced with the talking machine asking for my ticket and my money...yikes. So Melissa said, "Push the big red button and ask for help." I did and managed to babble out my situation in Italian (yes, yes, although there was a lot of stumbling) and they let us go through with the actual fee from our actual point of entry. Herb was not so lucky, he got a screaming lady and didn't have any Italian...but finally a very nice man came over to the car saying, "Don't get excited (not Herb's problem, perhaps, he was talking to the lady on the microphone)" and he fixed it for them, too, So, people here are pretty willing to help even when you do one of those things that terrify you if they happened at home.