What happens if the tourists don't come.....Lido di Jesolo

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There were kids everywhere at breakfast this morning and a couple sitting behind Gretchen hadn't been taught to eat with their mouths close.....enough said!

It is another sunny morning and the prospects for a fine day for driving looks good.We continue to pinch ourselves for the weather we have enjoyed so far making it possible to be out and about every day without the need to wear a raincoat.

It was always going to be difficult getting away from the hotel owner without him trying his English out on us and wanting to tell us about his wish to fish in NZ sometime as every time we have gone out he has been somewhere near the entrance to the hotel and it has taken 5 or 10 minutes of chatting to get past him.So this morning it was a shake of the hand after paying the bill and we were off.

Just north of Rimini we passed an extensive fun park which had a very tall water slide and rollercoaster.Today though it was closed so perhaps it too like the beach comes alive from May 1st when the summer season starts.

The fields all round were a mass of yellow which we took for an early crop of grapeseed and they gave a pleasant contrast to the green fields they were interspersed with.

As we turned off to Ravenna a woman on a bike on the other side of the road suddenly decided she was going to ride across in front of us.We think she misjudged our speed and although she got over in front of our arrival she was wobbling on her bike as we w ent past.In the rear vision mirror caught her falling off her bike.She didn't appear to be injured and we couldn't stop with traffic behind us and no where to park.No one else stopped and the last we saw was her getting back up and dusting herself off.

Ravenna was the first stop just an hour north to take in a church with some fabulous mosaics.Vicky took us to the right part of town and after finding a park we headed for a church that was within view.We got ourselves inside before the Sunday morning service was due to start but it was obvious we were not in the right church as there were no mosaics on display.We found a small map of the area and discovered the church we wanted was about 200 metres down the road so we followed the people with cameras ahead of us.

However we gave it a miss as there was a €11.50 charge to enter and although that gave you admission to another 3 attractions the BBA V2 committee decided the money would be better spent elsewhere as we had already seen some fantastic mosaics at the Monreale cathedral on this trip and of course previously in Istanbul.

So it was back on the road again looking for the SS16,the Adriatic,a road we had used earlier on the east coast for a few hundred kilometres.The SS16 however for some reason headed inland(strange when it is named after the sea that remained off to our right)and we moved onto the SS309 which would take us all the way as far as Venice.

The road so far had been of good quality and we managed a better average speed,partly due to it being a Sunday and there being less traffic,and we noticed our litres per 100km had come down another notch.We have a target to see if we can achieve in diesel usage at 4.4 litres per 100 km and we are now 2 notches away!

The towns became less frequent and to our left was a large area of water which looked like a lake but wasn't called a lake.The name of the area of water was Valli di Comacchio.Close to the road we were travelling on were canals and in one part ahead of us were a straight line of small,neat brown buildings that stretched for about a kilometre on the stop bank.Out side of each was a very large fishing net stretched out from the building over the water.Were the buildings very sophisticated huts or in this case houses that whitebaiters at home might use?They all looked unoccupied on this Sunday morning so perhaps it wasn't the season for whatever got caught in the nets or was it just because it was Sunday and we have found that Italians like to generally stay home on Sunday.

A little further north and we crossed the 45th parallel.

For the first time on this trip we w ere crossing rivers every few kilometres including one of Italy's biggest river the Po.

We were thinking about a lunch stop at Chioggia but we never actually went through the city but instead the road took a track that came as a bit of a surprise as we suddenly found ourselves over water with a series of long bridges and small islands that went on for about 4 or 5 kilometres.It seemed weird looking at the GPS with a narrow strip of road up the middle of the screen and on both sides just blue indicating we were a good distance from land on both sides as the screen was set at a kilometre.

Negotiating our way around the entry to Venice was relatively straightforward and we only took one wrong turn at a roundabout with 6 exits and we w ere back on track and soon back out in countryside again heading for the beach at Lido di Jesolo.

The Hotel Germania was all set up for package holidaymakers and perhaps as the name suggests most come in on air charters from Germany.There was a school party on a bus from Serbia in the main building so we had a room in the building on the other side of the road.It didn't worry us as we would be away from any noise the kids might make and the hotel was a couple of streets back from the beach so there was no sea views to be had from the balconies in the main building.And we didn't have to feel guilty about bringing the microwave in past the reception!

For the first time in the 45 years we have known each other,Gretchen decided she wanted,no needed,a McDonalds Big Mac meal without me prompting or suggesting.We have seen signs for McD's over the past month but never actually come across a restaurant or seriously sought one out.

However, 4 and a bit weeks of the food we have had,albeit that at times it has been very tasty,it was just time for some real meat!

Whoever made it up, is quite correct in the McDonalds 'World Pricing Index' which converts the price of Big Macs etc from US dollars back to the local currency and it all seemed to work out just that way when we converted the Euro cost to NZ dollars.It didn't matter either way,it was damn tasty and just what was needed to get the iron levels back up again.

We weren't going to need much for dinner so got some pasta and a sauce and we will be eating for under €4 for both of us tonight!

As the sun came back out in the early evening we took a walk down to and then along the beach.

The stretch of the beach here is not unlike the Mount at home, stretching for as far as the eye could see,like the Mount does towards Papamoa except here there was hotel after hotel,none more than 5 or 6 stories tall at least in the immediate vicinity of where we were, all the way along also as far as the eye could see.

What was really amazing though was the neat straight rows of umbrella stands all set at 2 metre intervals between each other from the high tide mark back to the walkway in front of the hotels.Mostly the rows were 12 or 13 stands deep and again when you looked both ways along the beach all you could see were umbrella stands,thousands of them,some with umbrellas already set out in them.We took a look later at a Google maps picture of the beach and it must have taken in summer as all you could see when you started to zoom in were...........the beach umbrellas!

There was no room here for your Kathmandu beach shelter/tent!

What if no tourists come this summer.............................................................

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