Advertisement
Days 15 -17 4th, 5th & 6th June Chianti Country – Venice
Day 15
We headed up country (Il Piloto clearly needing a fix for small tight country lanes) to Greve in Chianti, a small town up in the hills which we thought would give us a feel for the area. A certain amount of navigating needed to take place – FANNY and MAPS combination were set up. I only need to tell you that at a small roundabout in a small village both FANNY and MAPS (read: me) went AWOL. Neither of us knew where we were. Picture the scene: BIG BLUE LORRY going round and round small roundabout with Il Piloto (reverting to macho man) asking which turning (there were only 2) to take. We went to a garage, we paused, he read the map, declared he knew where we were (it took 4 mins) and off we went….in silence.
I have considered in depth why the SAT NAV was named FANNY, the female of the species, and am now wondering if NIGEL might not be a more appropriate name:
N avigational I indicator G ets E rroneously L ost.
The
incident was straight out of Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus (a must-read if you wish to travel in a lorry/or similar with your other half!). Don’t worry, all’s well – we were reunited in adversity when we found that we had to park miles out of town, the town wasn’t that interesting and Il P got bitten by a swarm of mosquitos!
We headed north east across Italy towards Venice.
Punta Sabbioni is a long spit of land that forms part of the division between the Venetian lagoon & the sea. It is a campers dream (if you like that sort of thing) with more campsites than you can shake a leg at. We drove straight to the end of the spit where the vaps (vaparettos: water taxis) leave for Venice & it’s islands and by good fortune found a small site only for motor homes – no luxurious pools & flumes just a parking lot with basic clean facilities. It’s cheap, it’s perfect; we intend to spend NO time at all here but all our days in Venice.
Days 15 & 16
We cycle to the vap, board & after some
20 minutes of zigging & zagging in the busy shipping lanes of the lagoon we arrive at St Marco. It’s a Sunday and the sea faring Venetians were out in force, all types of sea faring vessels fill the lagoon and there are sunbathers on every sand bar. Seeing Venice for the first time from the sea was Canalettoesque, the light was beautiful & the profile of the city recognisable from so many paintings. We immediately took to the side streets and headed north to the San Polo district. We dodge the tourists, we meet many dead-ends where one more step would put you in a canal (memories of FANNY in Lugano spring to mind), we confirm that street names bear no resemblance to our map but finally we make it to meet some friends for lunch. We sit alongside the Grand Canal, the sun shines, the gondolas float by and we consume the most expensive meal we have had to date – location, location, location!
I don’t wish to sound like a contributing reporter for Lonely Planet, or even quote too much from their current (and invaluable) edition on Italy BUT did you know that Venice is
built on 117 small islands connected by 400 bridges over 150 canals? The very idea of building a city of such wealth, such artistic richness, such power on swampland seems absurd but build they did. The Venetians became an awesome sea faring nation whose power stretched far and beyond the smelly lagoon on which it was founded. What a place! I love it.
We have tried hard to avoid the crowds but they, together with the ghastly sordid street vendors, are an unfortunate necessity if you wish to visit the main attractions. If you take advice from the guidebooks you can lessen the agony of queuing and this we managed to do. One of the guidebooks says that the best way to get to know Venice is to ‘get lost’ – so true. A great, & lucky, discovery has been the 2011 Biennalle Art Festival – random, weird & wonderful art ‘installations’ in buildings not normally open – a joy to behold.
Thanks to everyone (and you know who you are) that told us to visit the outlying districts, that gave us the names of restaurants and told us what to drink – we have obeyed like lambs
and will be eternally grateful.
We have spent two days in Venice and hardly touched the sides. Tomorrow we go to Murano by vap and then another vap ride back into the Cannaregio district. Ciao.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0537s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
deleted_49612
deleted_49612
testing 2
2 testing comments