Day 1 – Tuesday - 21
May – Mum to Venice - These are our Swiss Airways flights to get to
Venice from Mumbai, total travelling time of over 9 hours with a layover of 1
hour 15 minutes.
LX 155 T 21MAY BOMZRH HK2 0050
0615
LX 1660 T 21MAY ZRHVCE HK2 0730 0835
Mansi reached the airport before me and informs that there
is a humongous queue at the entrance, I am surprised that so many people are
flying out on a Monday. She gets in the queue to reserve our spot with her luggage
in tow. I am still around 15 minutes away just reached the turn off from the
highway at Andheri. Make it to the terminal at around 8.45pm to find two long
queues at the entrance to the terminal, people with loads of luggage of all
ages sweating away in the sweltering night outside Mumbai airport. Security
staff are barring people from entering unless documents like tickets and
passports are checked. My taxi driver of
course doesn’t have change for 500 and I am a hundred short, so search for
Mansi in the crowd, spotting her I run to her and get a hundred and dash back
to handover the fare to my driver who has in the meanwhile grabbed by luggage
and is walking it towards me (nice of him to do so).
The queue moves quickly and we are at the Swiss Airlines counter
within 15 minutes, finally air-conditioned comfort. Both of us are in t-shirts
and jeans and carrying sweaters for Zurich. We drop off the bags and collect
our boarding passes then head towards immigration. Again a huge queue at all
the counters, we wait patiently for our turn. The immigration officer doesn’t
ask me anything simply stamps my passport and hands it over.
Onwards to security check, I plonk by handbag onto the
conveyor belt and step up to the bored looking lady security guard for the metal detector check. All
done in minutes; we head into the duty free zone. Since we are not doing any
shopping we choose to head straight to our gate which is being shared with
other flights – Singapore Airways and British Airways to London. We still have
over 2 hours to go before we board....both of us are whatsapping with family
and friends. Finally we board just past midnight .....super hungry as dinner was just before I left
at 8pm. Mansi grabbed something to eat just before we boarded and was munching away in the queue and the bus.
Luckily they hand us a chicken roll just after take off and
of course beverages, Mansi opts for red wine to help her snooze, I settle for
orange juice. The whole plane settles down with few people viewing the onboard
entertainment options. We are flying an A330-300 airplane and are in 26A and B,
Mansi opts for the window seat, its good I had checked us online in the morning
and they had already allotted the seats we wanted J,
the seats are over the wing while as seat guru had shown them just past the
wings, oh well, its okay I guess. I try to sleep but its seriously
uncomfortable, I twist and turn in the seat trying to find a soft spot. The couple in the seat behind us keep kicking my seat intermittently just as I am about to get some sleep. Finally
I snooze for a couple of hours and wake up to check out the entertainment. They have
Julie and Julia, a movie I have wanted to see for ages, bad bit it’s just over
2 hours long and we don’t have that much flight time left. They serve us
breakfast which is pretty decent – omelette, beans and mashed potato for
non-veg, the vegetarian one looks ok too. We are of course given a Swiss
chocolate at the end of the meal; it’s all milk so I keep mine in my handbag.
We land just as the movie has 15 minutes left; I plan on
completing it on my return journey. Zurich is rainy and surrounded by greenery; we
can spot pines and plains in the darkest shades of greens surrounding the airport. The city looks quite flat;
we barely glimpse it as we fly over in seconds.
Zurich Flughafen looks huge with large glass windows across the front of
the building. The plane is of course on time and it’s just 6.15am Swiss time in
Zurich. We shiver as we cross the aerobridge to the terminal. The weather is a
little chilly and both of us pull on our sweaters. The shops at the
terminal are mostly closed so we amble across the terminal to locate our
connecting flight; the Swiss have a nice way of announcing and displaying the
gate numbers of all connecting flights on the plane itself so we know our gates
before we land.
Onto Passport control; where we queue up to meet with the
officer. Mansi's queue moves faster than mine as I have the bad luck of being stuck behind an Indian who has issues with his papers, something has expired and the officer doesn't look too happy. After the fellow hands over a bunch of papers, she insists he wait on the side while she awaits a colleague to check his immigration status, signalling to me to come to the counter. She simply asked me the purpose of my trip and how many days I plan to spend
and where. That’s it I am done, she stamps the passport and I am through.
We are the only ones from our plane heading to Venice so we
amble our way literally across from one end of the airport to the other to
reach our gate, pass through security clearance in 5 minutes, the only thing
the security guard asks us is if we are carrying water bottles. No metal
detector checks; that was fast!
We still have over half an hour to go before we board, both
of us are thirsty and the water coolers are not working... we wait patiently to
board. There is a cafe near our gate with atrocious pricing for water. All
the people on our flight are beautifully dressed Europeans; we are the only Indians heading to
Venice.
Our plane is a small one – a RJ-100 Avroliner according to
Seat Guru, we are in row 14, EF. The on board entertainment is Mr Bean on
screens suspended across the seat two rows in front of us. Mansi sleeps through
the flight, I take the window seat as I am excited to be reaching Venice, we
are offered water...finally and juice or coffee, I opt for a coffee...seriously
need some caffeine by now.. and of course Swiss chocolate. The flight is smooth and
the pilot informs us when we are at cruising altitude. Suddenly I can spot
water and islands below. The view is
gorgeous with blue skies, even bluer water and grey patches of isles below.
Mansi is all excited to capture the view with her camera and we switch seats to
help her get some great pics.
The airport is quite small and the few of us on the plane head to the only baggage carousel which is operational. Nothing is open at the airport, it all looks dead to me....once our bags are collected we wonder about passport control. Do we need to get our passports stamped and where?
We enquire with some security guards near the gate who just
sign to the door; we assume there is no passport check here and head out with
the others. We are supposed to follow the rainbow on the floor to the desk of
our transport facilitator according to our voucher instructions; but there are no rainbows on the floor...
After querying at a few other desks and not getting anywhere
we decide to wander around and suddenly spot my name pinned to the glass
window. They inform us that they are awaiting another couple who are sharing
the boat with us so we sit down and wait. Soon we and another Belgian couple
who are repeat visitors to Venice head out of the terminal following the
instructions given to us and walk across the terminal parking lot to the boat
pier to catch our boat.
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