We landed in Paris and then Venice after two excellent Air France Flights. Everything was great, the food was tasty, the doors in our pods were lovely and I slept like a baby.

Things continued to look up when baggage started coming out of the carousel in Venice very quickly. Things did not look as good when the carousel stopped, and we did NOT have our bags.

So we quickly darted to the Missing Luggage Desk as half our flight was also still waiting and most assumed more would come out. We decided not to risk that and were one of the first in line to fill out our forms. If we have waited hoping more luggage would come out, we would have been on line for 2-hours. Instead it was a 10 minute inconvenience and we left with the promise our luggage would be delivered later.

Our private transfer was waiting for us with a sign and everything (why people don’t spend a few dollars more for private transfers is beyond me) and we made our way in our water taxi to the St. Regis Hotel.

After checking in, Matt and I decided to go for a walk and explore Venice a bit.

After our walk we got ready for dinner, but had mocktails on the patio overlooking the Grand Canal first at our hotel. The St. Regis is not cheap and even their mocktails were pricey so we stuck with one.

After that we walked to dinner. The hotel recommended Do Forni  it as they had several non-seafood items for Matt. It was cool when I figured out that I went to this restaurant almost 20 years ago with my parents and Brian. Dinner was excellent, I had typical Venetian Cuttlefish which tastes a lot better than it looks.

When we returned to our hotel, Matt’s suitcase had arrived while mine was still sitting somewhere in Paris…

For our second and final full day in Venice we basically walked the entire city for me to go shopping at Nike to buy a new wardrobe on Air France’s dime. The problem with Venice is there are a lot of luxury clothing stores, but I really needed more casual clothing for the rest of the vacation as it was clear my luggage was not going to find its way to me for several more days. We also knew once we left Venice for the Dolomites the following day it would only increase the time before my luggage found me.

However, I did need some fancy clothing because Matt and I had a photoshoot scheduled later that day. Thankfully Matt has more fashion sense than I do and we found some stuff.

After stocking up on some clothes, Matt and I asked the hotel for a good pizza restaurant and they did not disappoint. After pizza it was time for us to change into our photoshoot clothing as we spend the afternoon on a Gondola and casually walking around Venice getting good photos of us. This was such a fun thing to do and it was not much more expensive than just doing the gondola without the shoot. Here is a tease from it, but will post more photos soon.

Dinner that night was at the St. Regis as if we are being honest, Venice has some of the worst food in Italy and we opted for convenience and the view. Gios has a typical Venetian menu, but our food was excellent. We both started off with their homemade bread which was to die for, then a pasta course before some seafood for me and beef for Matt.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel before taking a water taxi to find our driver for our journey into the Dolomites. Stay tuned!

PS Some of you are just dying we did not go on a walking tour or visited the glass factory, aren’t you? We prefer luxury over lines and heat 🙂