Trip report: Venice

And when she passes, Each one she passes goes… “ahh”

Ah, the soothing sounds of The Girl from Ipanema in the background welcomes me to this Emirates flight, EK435 from Brisbane to Dubai. This is the eighth time I’ve flown this route - the fastest time 13h50m (in July 2018), the slowest time 14h39m (in Jan 2020). I have flown on this A380 plane, A6-EEQ - once before: just a week ago, on my return to Brisbane. It’s eleven years old. Since I flew it, it’s been to London, Johannesburg, Cairo and Kuala Lumpur.

This plane arrived at 06:34 this morning, and has sat all day waiting for us. I’d have been perfectly happy for a flight at 10am, but no, here we are, awaiting an 8.55pm departure. As is the Emirates way, we board directly from the lounge. There are two Emirates flights a day from Brisbane - one at 8.55pm, another just two hours later. I guess it saves money on ground staff to have them this way.

My journey through Brisbane airport began, as usual, with my passport not scanning in the machines. I don’t know why this is, and nor does anyone else. But, we’re one step closer to understanding why - it’s a “time out” error. The airport was quiet as I walked down to the Emirates lounge, past the random “airport lounge in a corridor”. (To put this in context, I can touch the big black sign in this photograph by just raising my arm above my head).

Quando Quando Quando rears its ugly head on the welcome music, slipping out of the speakers like a lump of cold sick.

I had a WP welcome before we left the ground, and even a glass of water taken to me on a silver platter before we took off. This never happens. How splendid. And it doesn’t stop there. I have an econobed, with nobody sitting in 45B or 45C. And the nice FA who welcomed me, also came to serve me my drinks and dinner before anyone else. And the chicken (allegedly with ginger and lemon, though I don’t believe either of that) was actually decent.

This “treat the Platinum flyer” continued throughout the flight - I got my breakfast first, and got a delivery of some mid-flight snack while I was asleep.

Next, connecting to terminal C in DXB. I’m sure there was once a sneaky way to beat the queues in connections if you were Platinum, but I haven’t found it recently. The first lounge in terminal C is much more modern than the A/B terminals, though the floor wobbles quite alarmingly - I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about though. I do my day job, have some breakfast, have a shower. This lounge doesn’t have direct access to the gates - I thought that was the Emirates way.

DXB-VCE

EK135 to Venice, next. This is a Boeing 777-300, also eleven years old; it has come from Prague to be here today. The front page of the IFE system promises “the best from Spotify”, showing a Trevor Noah podcast. This seems to be new. I try to find it, but it’s not under “podcasts” at all, and instead is under “music”. (It turns out that it was announced three days later, so I had what was probably an exclusive). I sit in my surprisingly cramped window seat, with two big Italian guys next to me, enjoying The Girl from Ipanema, and promising myself that I will find my noise-cancelling headphones for Quando, Quando, Quando, the aural equivalent of a glass of room temperature milk.

I get a WP welcome. “How are you today, Mr Cridland?” Aurelia asks me. “I’m a bit squished, but otherwise I’m okay,” I truthfully answer. There’s a pause.

“Well…” she teases. “Well…”

Have I just scored myself a -

“Well, it’s a very full flight. But do call if you need anything.”

Oh.

The meals are the wrong way round on this flight, with a snack first, and the big meal later. But everything was fine. I watched a bit of CNN, and a some downloaded YouTube videos. Weirdly, including an episode of “Call My Bluff” from the 1970s, which was gentle and fun and had Tom Baker in it. As a format, it worked rather well. I realise that “Would I lie to you” is much the same kind of game, except with swearing.

We land in Venice - not having to do a last-minute aborted landing which happened to me last time I visited here. I’m treated to The Girl from Ipanema as I wait to get off.

And then the challenge of getting to the hotel. The options are: a) a water taxi, costing €160 (well over AUD$200), taking 30 minutes; or b) a water bus, costing €15 and taking over an hour. I did the water bus. We’re held up because some dignitaries, accompanied by beret-wearing soldiers, decide they’re more important.

Venice

Venice is quite pretty. Entirely impractical on many levels, but still, quite pretty. I enjoy wandering around the tiny alleyways, dodging both the tourists and the many stickers saying “GO HOME TOURISTS”.

And the hotel I’m in has a chocolate fountain and candy bar for breakfast. I didn’t dare.

VCE-DXB

On the way back, I have to do some of my work in the water taxi on the way. Including, rather astonishingly, recording and uploading a podcast. Thank heavens for 4G coverage (and a decent roaming plan).

I was slightly delayed after getting to the airport. The water taxi ran on time, and all that — no, it was just that, like a good citizen, I felt compelled to read the extensive rules, from the “competent authorities”, in order to be able to operate the elevator.

That job done, the Marco Polo lounge in the airport, which almost all the airlines use, is unusual in that it has a balcony in the “fresh” air (replete with “no smoking” signs, since the air blows inside). I sit inside, though. There is one beer on offer - a Peroni.

Most flights here are European - so everything, including the lounge, is before passport control, which takes you into a small area of the airport with a small bar, another duty free store, and an automatic drinks vending machine.

The plane has come from Rome (via Dubai). It’s A6-EBK, a surprisingly old Boeing 777-300 (18 years old). My economy seat has a power point, but a small, low-resolution 4:3 screen - and the box for its equipment filling at least half my foot space for the next 5h 43m.

The good news, though - I’m treated to a different music track! A bit of Motown, then rather oddly “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when”. Thankfully that all goes away when we begin takeoff.

I use the five hours to do some work on the wifi. It’s decent, fast (ish), and works well. It’s annoying that Qantas hasn’t yet sorted wifi on long haul. It’s really useful for someone with a deadline.

Dubai

We land 4 minutes late, which is fine, at a remote parking spot, which isn’t. A walk down some wobbly stairs in the humid Dubai heat, to a bus that was so cold, your hand almost froze on the metal handrails. The bus seemingly drove round most of Dubai, before dumping us out in the bowels of the airport, but the wrong bowels, needing a lot of walking, a set of complex elevators, then a train, then a horse-drawn carriage and a grass maze, and I’ve only made one of those up, okay, two. I arrive with an hour in the lounge.

The lounge includes a bunch of newspapers (printed locally), and News Appeared To Have Happened, so I took a quick look. Some, like this German one, used quite nice wordplay:

…although there were some with questionably wordy headlines.

I’ve only just realised that the sub-editor was desperately trying to use “Trump” and “Trumpet” as a pun. Bloody hell, really?

Sadly, Die Zeit wasn’t there, so I couldn’t see this headline in print.

Doing a daily newsletter means, if you’ve 23 hours of travelling, you have to write and publish it from the lounge - which then means no time for anything else particularly. But I do that piece of work, and schedule it to send an hour before I land. I’ve got another newsletter to send, so we’ll be buying the wifi on this flight too, I suspect.

DXB-BNE

I get on the plane accompanied by Quando, Quando, Quando assaulting my eardrums, slowly pushing its way out of the speakers like some kind of invasive plant. On the plus side, it appears I’ve missed The Girl from Ipanema. I would have preferred it the other way round really.

I’d carefully switched seats when I checked in 12 hours ago to one with an empty seat next to me - but, no such luck, it’s now occupied by a bloke. My normal seat, two rows in front, now has an empty seat in the middle. Sigh.

I’m on A6-EEL, which I took on October 2nd. This A380 has just had a nice trip to Vienna and back. It’s the eleventh time I’ve taken this route - the first was in 2017. The shortest was 13 hours and 22 minutes. I’m not really very thrilled at taking it again, especially all squished up in a row of three.

And then the WP welcome. “How are you, Mr Cridland?” I try my new line: “I’m a bit squished up, but otherwise all good.” He replies - “would you like to move your seat?” BUT YES, MY MAN! I WOULD. I’m moved three rows back, out of the special seats, into a bulkhead row of three next to the window, and take 53F. Now, you don’t get to convert this to an econobed, disappointingly, since the seats have arms that don’t move - and I don’t ordinarily like the bulkhead because it gives you less foot room - but it is a much more roomy seat, so this is a good thing. It’s the first time I’ve had a change of seat as a little WP perk. (Except, as it happens, the other time I took this very aircraft, on October 2. It’s a lucky aircraft. Possibly.

It was kind of fine. 53F is next to the galley so is a little noisy and light, but it was fine. It’s a good place to go to understand quite how much hard work the FAs do during the flight. Breakfast first, then a sleep, then the main meal. We land in Brisbane a little late, with a ten minute delay to find someone to connect us to the air bridge. I think (whisper it) I’d have had better sleep in my original seat; but I had much more space in this one.

Then, as has become usual for some reason, a wait for an Uber. It’s 11.20pm by the time I leave the airport (we landed at 10.56pm), and Uber has difficulty in finding a driver. I am silly enough to go for Uber Green normally when I travel, but this seems a mistake, since there don’t appear to be any drivers available. There’s no way to say “or Uber Comfort, I don’t care, just get me home” without cancelling. It’s a bit frustrating, especially since this is the only real option - the train has stopped running for the night. Well, it’s this or a taxi.

After twenty minutes waiting for the Uber ($50-ish) I gave up, and got a taxi, only the second time I’ve ever got a taxi in Brisbane after eight years of living here. $70.28 later, I’m home - after my last speaking gig of the year.

I’ve two more trips - 53 hours in Los Angeles next week, and then a 36 hour trip to Sydney the week after; but that’s probably it for the trip reports this year.

Who knows where next year will take me? I do, actually - Switzerland, Chicago, London, Athens, Toronto and Dallas. And probably many more places. I’ll finish next year hitting Lifetime Gold with the airline, which I’ll have achieved in just ten years: but I hope not to requalify for Platinum again. Time to be choosier with where I go, I think. Especially given The News That Happened.