Venice after 29 years

Leaving Larnaca for Athens

The bus to the airport runs along Larnaca’s waterfront and I was able to take it from near my apartment.  The airport is located near a salt lake or salt flats, which I hadn’t noticed when I arrived.

I got to the airport after 0800 and had to wait around 20 mins for check-in to open.  Fortunately, that meant I was close to the front of the queue.  Following on from that, immigration was slow.  I had 50 mins in the lounge before heading to the gate.

On board the Airbus A321neo, the crew requested those with even decent-sized backpacks to put them under the seat, saving the lockers for hard roll-ons.  It was a full flight.

Strange thing about this flight is that the prime flight number is Olympic Air, codeshared with Aegean Air.  But it is operated by Aegean Air.  Perhaps it is a traffic right issue.  Aegean owns Olympic anyway and Olympic now runs the largely domestic propeller services and Aegean the jet services domestically and around Europe.

From my window seat near the front of the Economy cabin, the curtains of the movable partition with business class completely obscured my view of the safety demonstration.  Not to worry, I’m familiar with this aircraft type.  😊

A snack box of a not-very-substantially-filled roll was given out on this 1h45 flight, only to be somewhat repeated on the next leg of 2h20 to Venice.

Tight connection in Athens

I have a 1h connection in Athens.  Because this was an impulse trip, I had plenty of other things to think about.  It hadn’t dawned on me that Larnaca – Athens – Venice was a Non-Schengen to Schengen connection.  In non-EU speak, it is akin to an International to Domestic connection.

My flight from Larnaca landed a couple of minutes later than the 1215 scheduled arrival.  By the time we parked up and disembarked, valuable minutes had already been wasted.  The “Connection Ambassador” was on hand to tell connecting passengers their next departure gate but did very little else.

Fortunately, I had looked up the connections process in the inflight magazine so it wasn’t a shock to me that I had to queue up for immigration passport control to enter the Schengen zone and Greece.  There was no way I’d make my flight with that queue.  Along with a couple of other people, I sought help from airport staff, showing her our onward boarding pass.  We were let through to the front of the queue.

Just before that, there had been a check on Covid-19 Passenger Locator Forms for entry into Greece.  I hadn’t done one as I thought I would be in transit.  I had forgotten that I would be entering Greece first to get to Italy.  Fortunately, I was waved on since I had a boarding pass to Venice.

With no luggage to collect, I exited the arrival hall and proceeded upstairs at pace.  I walked past the various check-in desks to find the entry into the departure hall.  Fortunately, security check was reasonably swift and once I was airside, I could breathe easy.

I slowed down and walked to my departure gate to find that boarding had not commenced.  I had time to fill up my water bottle, and a further 10 min wait, before we were shuttled by bus to a remote gate where the Aegean Air A319 was waiting for us.

I was really surprised that Aegean Air would sell a 1h connection from a Non-Schengen area to a Schengen area when the passenger processing flow wouldn’t allow such a connection to be achieved without intervention.

At the very least, Athens airport should have a special passport control lane for connecting passengers.   Even better if that lane leads straight into a security checkpoint that takes one through to the departure hall.  Like Kuala Lumpur’s international-to-domestic connection process.

Arriving in Venice

Seated on the right-hand side of the plane, I was able to see the islands of Venice as we descended to land at 1435.  Being a dull day, the photo wasn’t very good.  Subsequent attempts to capture photos proved worse as my phone camera didn’t want to focus on infinity.

As this was an intra-Schengen arrival, we walked straight out with no passport control but there were random customs checks.  Neither my Italian Covid-19 Passenger Locator Form nor my Covid-19 test wasn’t asked for or checked by anyone here in Italy.

I had two options to get to my accommodation in Venice.  It was a choice of waterbus or bus combined with waterbus, both costing about the same price.  I had chosen the former in my head already and took the long walk of about 15 mins (indoor) to the airport’s waterbus station.

Damn!  I had just missed the boat by 10 mins and had to wait about 45mins till we boarded the Allilaguna Orange Line to my stop at Rialto.

The journey started off in a rather open area of the sea, with large wooden tripods marking the way.  About 15 mins later, we started to see some islands.  Stops were made along the way and it was an hour later when I arrived at my stop.  It also coincided with sunset, which was about 1700 at this time of year.

The walking directions to the Alla Fava hotel weren’t absolutely complete and to make it worse, it was slightly outdated.  Google Maps helped me through the narrow alleyways to my accommodation.

The hotel looked like a bad choice from the outside, being an old rundown building.  Once inside, it was old but spotlessly maintained.  All the old wooden furniture were still high polished, looking like new.

I found the supermarket nearby and stocked up on drinking water.  As it was already dark, I walked around to absorb the ambience of this amazing city by night.  It had been raining.  The air was cool and damp and the cobblestones slippery.

I’m back in Venice after 29 years and it was magical to experience the city by night.  I often hear of people day-tripping here because of difficulties getting reasonably-priced accommodation.  I managed to do it with only two weeks lead-time, thanks for some parts of the world still closed due to Covid-19.

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Having done very little today but sit (and a brisk walk during my tight connection in Athens), I had a simple dinner of a sandwich and a Spritz (arperol, sparkling wine and soda water).

More about flying with Aegean Air

The flight wasn’t cheap by my standards but it’s probably quite reasonable for other people.  I have an onward ticket to Malta with Emirates but I wasn’t sure if my vaccination record was acceptable to them so I thought I’d use that ticket at a later time.  That leg brought down my overall ticket price but about NZD200 due to Larnaca being a “higher intermediate point”.

At this time of year, there seemed to be few budget options to take me to mainland Europe, in particular Italy.  I was left with few economic options as I hadn’t planned this trip in advance.

Aegean Air to Venice seemed to be the best option for me to meet up with friends in Italy who would drive me to their home for a few days in France.

• The base price for the Aegean ticket was EUR120 (“Light”) including taxes but only cabin baggage of 8kg or a personal item (but not both).  It’s not so bad for what would have been a 4h flight if one had existed.  But as there was only one seat left at that price, I couldn’t dilly-dally and work out my baggage requirements for this impulse trip.
• The next level up in the fare family was “Flex” at EUR132 which included 8kg cabin baggage and a personal item.
• The highest member of the fare family was “Comfort Flex” at EUR167 which included 8kg cabin, 1 personal item and 1 checked-in baggage up to 23kg.

In my haste I went for the most generous baggage option as I had no idea what I would be bringing, as I would be in Europe when it is nearly winter and then potentially be in Borneo for months to come.  It’s not my usual 7kg cabin bag including laptop!

Having chosen the highest option, I was put-off by many passengers with a wheelie bag and a backpack of decent size.  I doubt they would all have paid for the highest option.  Their fare family baggage options are very hard to police.  Being somewhat a full-service airline, they don’t seem to be checking people’s carry-on at all, let alone checking them against their fare type.  Quite unlike budget airlines where they do check.

Maybe next time I’ll take a bit of a gamble and go for the middle option.