Venezia

Since we had to cancel our big summer family trip due to illness, we decided to schedule a quick getaway to Venice, Monaco & Côte d’Azur just for David and I. My birthday was in August, his is coming up in October and our big 10th anniversary is in November, so might as well make it an extra nice trip and enjoy ourselves.

The trip started off rocky. We flew with TAP Airlines out of Miami and their flight was delayed by 2.5 hours which made us miss our connection flight from Lisbon to Venice. Once we landed in Lisbon, we couldn’t find a single useful customer service agent and it seemed everyone was in a bad mood and doing us a favor. Being Portuguese I was not going to hold back and let them know they had to find us an alternative flight right away and that it had been their fault we missed our connection flight. They argued, they walked away and David was ready to get arrested in Portugal 😉 Total joke and we promised ourselves to NEVER fly Tap ever again. EVER!

Once we demanded a ticket from TAP, instead of sending us with another airline directly to Venice, they booked us on a TAP flight to Bologna, which at this point we didn’t care if they sent us to Dubai. We just wanted to get out of Lisbon and move on.

On the bright side, the butler services at the St Regis Venice, were beyond helpful and kept in close touch with us throughout the day. Once they found out we had been redirected to Bologna and were to catch a non-stop train to Venice, they sent Blitz Exclusive to pick us up from the station. As soon as we arrived, we had someone with a name sign waiting for us and he drove us to the dock. At that point we had someone on a boat waiting for us and that’s when our day turned around and our vacation started.

They adjusted our dinner reservation at Gio’s and we had a wonderful meal with an unbelievable meal.

Our goal was to spend 2 days in Venice but now that Lisbon had wasted one of those days (keep in mind we landed in Lisbon around 6am and didn’t arrive to Venice until 9pm), we were to spend one evening and one full day in Venice before heading to Monaco.

As always, we had a great time in Venice and it was as if this was our first time there. Venice never ceases to amaze us.

Fun fact: you know you own a boat, when you keep asking the Venetians if they need help with their lines and docking! Ha.