15th Aug - Venice

Happy Ferragosta Day. Apparently it is a public holiday today (Assumption of the Virgin Mary/Feast of the Assumption) in Austria and Italy - that explains why all the streets and shops were deserted today!
Today we travelled from St Gilgen’s, near Salzburg in Austria to Cavallino, near Venice in Italy. It was a pretty long drive - but good to get it over with since all the shops were closed anyway. What made the drive even longer was our good old friends - the thunder and lightning (and yes, there is thunder and lightning now, in fact Daniel is down at the beach trying to photograph the lightning). We packed up this morning to a somewhat dreary day, but no rain, thankfully, and moved on out. Then the rain started and then the fat rain started and then the torrential downpours started, oh yeah, and the thunder and lightning. The rain was so hard; I don’t think I’ve even seen it that bad before. We had landslips on the road, massive puddles all over the road, fire engines everywhere working to clear roads, people sweeping water out of their businesses and houses, brown swollen torrent like rivers - all up, pretty disgusting weather. The weather didn’t change much as we drove through Italy either, until we started to clear all the mountains. Then the sun was out, kind-of, and the thermometer was reading 29.2oC.
We managed to find a camping spot from our camping guide - we were worried there would be no spaces left but this must be the vacation area because there are about a billion campsites around here, and you can’t tell it’s a public holiday as there are people everywhere and all the shops are open! We set up camp just as the thunder and lightning and rain started, lucky us, and were thoroughly drenched by the time we were finished. As luck would have it, the heavy rain stopped soon after we finished putting up our tent! So we have had a walk around the area - really funny as all the shops are open till 8 or 11pm. And we have looked around our campsite. You can tell we are in Italy as the camp rules state we have to be quiet between 1pm to 3pm and 11pm to 7am!
Our campground has a nice beach area, with a bar playing dance music out on the beach front (competing with the music from all the other holiday resorts), a swimming pool, a pizzeria, and a shop, even complete with shopping trolleys! Apparently we can take a boat across to Venice which is a 40 minute boat ride - so that’s what we’ll be doing tomorrow - here’s hoping the weather improves.

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