Marco Polo

Marco Polo is well known as the adventurer from Venice who traveled to China in the 13^th century. No small task, I imagine, without the help of planes, trains or automobile, no hotel reservations, no Starbucks or indeed any cafes, and no Google translator. The mind boggles how he and his father and uncle not only traveled that great distance but were received with great hospitality by the Emperor Kublai Khan. Apparently, the Emperor was impressed by Marco’s intelligence, though hard to image that Marco had mastered Chinese or that there was a translator in Kublai Khan’s court that spoke Italian. 

At any rate, he appointed Marco as his emissary and sent him on diplomatic missions to present-day  India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as traveling extensively through China—for 17 years! He chronicled his adventures in a book called The Travels of Marco Polo, so if I want some details about how he did this—and I do— guess I’ll try to find that book. 

 

Meanwhile, Marco Polo is also a tag game played by kids in swimming pools. The kid who is “it” has to close his eyes and then shouts out “Marco!” and all the other kids answer “Polo!” “It” continues to call, the rest continue to respond, and in this way, “it’ tries to find someone to tag using sound location. 

 

It’s a fun game to play, but not so fun for others to have to listen to. Once at a pool, my mother, unaware that this was a game, was being driven crazy from the repetition and walked up to one of the kids and said, “If you say that one more time, I’m going to kill you!!!” It took some explaining on my part to the rightfully upset parent that my mother simply misunderstood that this was a game and I apologized on her behalf. 

 

Marco Polo is also the name of the airport in Venice. But apparently, not the only one. Karen and I flew in from the tiny Luton Airport outside London and upon arriving, got a message from Pam, one of the other 5 friends on the bike trip we were about to begin. We thought we should take the shuttle to the hotel together, so my wife called her and they tried to figure out how to meet in the airport. Pam kept talking about meeting at the Water Tower and Karen kept telling her there was no Water Tower in sight. After ten minutes of confusion, I got on the phone with Pam, tried to clarify whether she was on the first level or the second and made a plan that she would walk from one exit door to the other and I should do the same in the opposite direction. Neither of us were in sight. 

Finally I asked, “What’s the name of your airport?”

She replied, “Marco Polo Airport.” 

And then the lights went on. “We’re in Venice Treviso Airport!!” Some deep metaphor in there, as each must have been thinking the other was crazy until we realized that we were in two different places! It was like playing “Marco Polo” in two different swimming pools.

 Apparently the Marco Polo Airport is for International Flights outside of Europe and Treviso for more local and European ones serviced by the bargain-brand airlines like Easy Jet, Ryan Air and others. (We took Ryan Air.) The penalty for our cheap flight was an 88 Euro taxi ride to our hotel instead of the free shuttle. Oh well.

 

At the end of it all, we all finally convened at the hotel, ready to begin my 5^th European bike trip, Karen’s 8^th. Stay tuned!