On The Way Home

If you blog after watching Jerry Seinfeld or Ellen DeGeneris you end up writing a lot of things that start with, "Have you ever noticed...?"

The trip to the airport in Venice is different from anywhere else. The hotel porter wheels you down the street to the dock where you dump everything into a water taxi, which is a boat with a sign that says TAXI in the window. The ride was pretty cool. They don't have a meter in these taxis and you've got to trust that the guy knows where he's going, because it's not like there are any road signs pointing you to the airport.

You pull into the dock, take your bags, and find a sign with a pictogram of someone walking which reads, 7 min. It was hot and sweaty, but not really hard to get to the terminal and there are signs that say 4 min, 3 min, etc. Certainly not any worse than dealing with a rental car shuttle bus.

Once in the terminal you do the same dance you always have to do if you bought something in Europe and want your VAT refund. You check in, bring bags and boarding passes and forms to customs, get the forms stamped, recheck your bags, mail the forms (or get cash, but I didn't want Euros at this point) and you're done.

For those unfamiliar with the VAT, it's kind of like a sales tax, but it's fun to to say that in front of someone who is an advocate for VAT, because they get really indignant and huffy and start explaining the fundamental differences. You see, the don't tax the sale, so it can't be a sales tax; they tax the production where value is added to products (like making shirts from big pieces of cloth). That's why it's called Value Added Tax and it's a tax on the producers, not the buyers, except that it is always itemized and added into the final cost of the item, so the only difference for a consumer is that the tax is added before the price rather than after.

Anyway, this tax is so immense that they feel guilty charging it to foreigners, and so to ease their consciences (and improve sales to tourists) they refund part of the tax to you if you spend enough money in one store (about $200 or more). To give you an idea of how huge this tax is, just the refund part is 12.5% of the total, way more than any sales tax I've ever seen. I know they keep at least that much.

I should note that in our 3+ weeks in Italy we never encountered any mention of Marco Polo except that the Venice airport and the business class lounge are named after him. I guess he's more famous here, especially for inventing that cruel swimming pool game.

We got on the plane in routine fashion. This plane featured a balky but ultimately pleasant touch screen system and seats with 14 adjustments, which seemed too comp0licated until I saw that one of them said "RELAX," so I just pushed that one.

On the plane there was some movie on another passenger's video screen that was taking place in the future. I like the movie future in action movies because they always have these really long slides that the hero goes down unwillingly and which look like great fun.
That's all for now. Afterthoughts later.