Sunrise in Venice and sunset in London

Saturday already and our cruise was coming to an end. Potentially a stressful day with another flight change causing a shorter than desired time to make the segue from cruise ship to aeroplane.

A very early breakfast meant that I saw the sun rise again. I must say it created wonderful colours over Venice.

 Two interesting things in this photos - the size of the cruise ship in the background, and the Conad truck delivering groceries. Note that the truck is on a barge and the deliveries are being unloaded from the barge.

I have previously said that the worst thing I have ever seen was cruise ships in Venice. I still think they look terrible in that setting but I must say that they barely cause a ripple as they slowly glide up the canal. They appear to cause less water damage than the many small boats speeding up and down.

We had an early disembarkation, a smooth walk to the People Mover, our pre-paid airport transfer bus was waiting at Piazalle Roma and we were at San Marco Airport in no time. Seamless! What a relief.

Interesting views over the lagoon as we flew out of Venice.

How they contrast with flying over England.

We landed at Gatwick airport where there were two interesting art works celebrating Elizabeth II, the People's Queen. Interestingly, the pictures were made up of tiny photos of ordinary people.

After a lengthy and expensive transfer coach ride from Gatwick to Heathrow and a Hotel Hoppa bus to our hotel we thought our potentially stressful day had gone really well.

Wrong! A message from Qantas saying our flight had been cancelled was just what we didn't want to hear. We were eagerly looking forward to flying on the new Dreamliner non-stop flight from London to Perth in 17 hours. Thanks to a disruptive passenger the day before causing the plane to have to return to Perth, our flight had been cancelled.

Getting a new flight organised, cancelling a hotel booking in Melbourne, cancelling a lunch date with our daughter, worrying about our pre-paid train ticket from Melbourne to home and trying to get a late check-out from our hotel in London certainly raised the stress levels.

Eventually we got to the restaurant at the hotel where we knew they did great curries and eased the tension with food!