Travel Day(s): Chino Hills to LAX to Montreal to Rome to Venice in 30 hours

We decided to stay up all night. We would be arriving in Rome at 8am local time after leaving our apartment at 4am the day before. We figured the only way to get on the right schedule was to go without sleep for one night and attempt as much sleep as possible during the 14 combined hours of flying it would take to get to Italy.

My dad picked us up a 4:15am Pacific Standard Time at our apartment in Chino Hills. He volunteered for this ridiculous job; waking up at a stupid hour to drive 30 minutes to pick us up, an hour to LAX and more than an hour back to Ontario to start a full work day. I would’ve called in sick, and considering the psychological torture he endured navigating the drop-off area at LAX before his brain realized it was no longer dreaming, I think it would’ve been entirely justified.

As we waited the 2 hours in the LAX international terminal for our flight to begin boarding I thought I noticed a haggard, homeless looking man sort of aimlessly staring in my direction out of my periphery. I looked up, and he quickly looked down at his phone. Upon further inspection I decided this homeless man looked familiar. I followed my suspicion to IMDB and confirmed that he was indeed Thomas Middleditch from the HBO show Silicon Valley. I was very excited to make a celebrity sighting and texted Chase (Huge fan of Silicon Valley) to brag. As we basked in the glow of the reflected celebrity obtained by sitting near such a man we noticed another familiar face walking past us to order at the very restaurant which had recently taken my order, standup comedian and sometimes actor Brian Posehn.

I’ll wait for you to look it up… You recognize him right?

In this space of time, we had become very cool indeed, and being as cool as we now were, we knew not to say hi, or ask for pictures, or claim undying love as Chase suggested we should. We just sat there with the knowledge that we were awesome and tried not to fall asleep into our food. Both of the gentlemen here mentioned were again sited at our gate waiting for the flight to Montreal as were a small collection of vaguely recognizable comedian types we overheard talking about performing at some festival. We Googled it and found no such festival scheduled anywhere near Montreal any time in the next month. This must have been the most exclusive and amazing comedy festival ever if even Google didn’t know about it. And now I’m writing about it, so will surely be kicked out of the cool people club for letting regular people in on the secret.

We passed out immediately on takeoff. But, as anyone who has ever attempted sleep on a plane will tell you, there is no such thing as a comfortable position in which to lose consciousness hurtling through the air at fantastic speeds in a cramped metal tube and sitting in the back row (just behind the jet engines doing the excessively loud propelling). So, while there was technically sleep, it was short and unfulfilling all together.

We arrived in Montreal at 3:30 Eastern Standard Time and had a little more than 2 hours to kill before our next boarding. We ate at a fairly upscale (for an airport) restaurant called Archibald’s. The thing that immediately stuck me about Canada was that everyone was speaking French, the TV’s were showing the Tour de France in French, and I don’t have a third example of things I immediately noticed so this list feels incomplete.  I had heard that Canadians like to put mayonnaise on everything. If our restaurant is representative of Canada in general, this is true. Calamari? Mayo. French Fries? Mayo. Burger? Mayo. I saw the table next to us had ordered a pizza and while I didn’t necessarily see mayo anywhere near it, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the pizza sauce was somehow mayo-infused. I see no problem with any of this. Mayonnaise is wonderful and should be a part of every meal.

Other things noticed at the Montreal Airport that are more than likely representative of Canada in general based on my incredible knowledge of a country I have not visited outside of these 2 hours:
- Ketchup packets are an actual serving size! So you don’t need 4 of them to get the correct amount of ketchup for your fries! Also, Ketchup tastes somehow maple infused, which is wonderful.
- The US dollar is worth a bit more than the Canadian dollar. So, if you are charged $40 for lunch, it’s actually like $37.
- (From our return trip) All Burger Kings are out of ranch at the moment but they promise they usually have it.

We boarded our scheduled 8 hour flight to Rome at 6pm. We were dismayed when we noticed the seats had no entertainment system and I was further dismayed when I sat down and my knees hit the seat in front of me with no room to spare. Our pilot came on the speaker to welcome us and to apologize in advance that there would be a slight delay of 15-20 minutes while an issue with the air conditioning was addressed. No matter, Kim and I were running on very little sleep and the quiet would make it easy to pass out. We woke what seemed like 5 hours later to another announcement. “I’m sure by now you’ve all realized that the 15 to 20 minute delay is now 90 minutes and we’re still waiting for service. There was a crew here a minute ago but it looks like they went to lunch. Because of our delay, we’re going to have to take a different route to Rome, which might take a little longer.”

It is 11:00am Central European time and we’re just getting off our plane. This is a problem. We purchased tickets for a train to Venice leaving Rome at 11:30. It seemed like a good plan when we booked a flight that landed at 8:00. Now it’s not looking as good. If we can get through customs and get our bags fast enough, we may just make it.

Now it’s 12:00. We’re hoping there’s someone at the train station who speaks English and might be able to transfer our tickets. Nope. We get tickets for a train that’s leaving… now. Running with lots of bags and… we made it! Now just sit back and we’ll be in Venice just a little late at 5:30. Wrong. There are a few delays and we end up in Venice at 7:00.

Mercifully, the hotel we had booked was only a few hundred yards from the train station and we walk in, exhausted. 30 hours after leaving our apartment, we made it.