Rose has described going to Chioggia as her falling back in love with real Italy, not tourist Italy. Chioggia is touted as little Venice or the Venice without tourists. To our credit, we choose a wonderful apartment to base from and the owners provided us with the local knowledge to eat and relax well. We happened to arrive during the start of a week long "festival of the sea" and this afforded us with live entertainment each night to accompany our dinner. The bonus of Chioggia was that you can't drive your car so we could both drink...not such a good recipe... the first night we found ourselves at a locals restaurant and drinking messa litro prosecco at €5 each was a recipe for disaster. After 2.5 liters of wine and a fab dinner, we stumble ... read more

Firstly to all those who regularly watch for our bloggs , sorry for the delay, we have had a fully packed 10 days and the bloggs have not been done. So I have set aside a day to catch them up., After landing back in Bologne from Berlin, we started the drive to Trieste which we decided required a stop over in Padua (Padova) for the night. In Padua we found a lovely town (hot at 33) with a small central marketplace and lots of restaurants. After Lunch we left Padua to Trieste and our home for the 5 nights. Trieste has always been a desire for me to see as 20 years ago I was involved in setting up Perfect Espresso who were or are the Illycaffe agents for New Zealand and I have always ... read more

I am excited today, as we have booked a factory tour of the Ducati plant and Museum. Sorry there will be no photos of this, as we had to lock the camera in a locker and the phones were provided with "No Camera" stickers to cover both lenses so we could not take photos of the factory. You will have to take my word when I say that this tour is well worth the effort to see. I have been quite taken by the Scrambler range of bikes they have. These are a cross over bike with semi road tyres that would be great in a forest dirt track. The Museum on the other hand was a bit average compared with Porsche or Michelin, but a great chronology of Ducati's history. After the Museum we planned ... read more

Today we left the lovely little town of Lezzeno and the wonderful Apartment we stayed in. This is also a sad day for Rose and I as Clarke leaves us to go to Berlin and continue her holiday with out us. We have had such a great time with her! So the first stop was Malpensa Airport and then off to Parma to get our bearings as we have an early start tomorrow and need to be at the Information Center in Parma (87km away from where we are staying) by 9:30 am. So a nice lunch in Parma and then on to the accommodation at Serramazzoni (just outside of Maranello) another gem of a spot with IllyCaffe machine for me... We will walk the 200 meters to dinner tonight and be up early in the ... read more

Yesterday we left Etoy and traveled to the other end of Lake Geneva (originally called Lac Lemon) where we stopped to visit Chillon Castle, this is a 1000 year old castle that sites on rock in the lake. Access was across a modern bridge, but once in the castle the was a lot of history. Its prison once held Lord Byron and has been bombed and rebuild over the centuries. After leaving the castle and stopping next to the lake for a picnic, we headed for the mountains and Italy. We rose from 400m to 2000m and back down to 250m all in the space of 2 hours. The longest tunnel was over 6km long and seem to take for ever. Once in Turin we found our hotel the Allegroitalia Golden Palace right in the center ... read more