The Road to over there: June 2013

Venice

We decided to have an extra day at the campsite in Venice to recover from the previous four days exertions. Obviously getting too old. Last night we got back well after dark having spent several hours admiring the place under the spell of a full moon and very nice it was too. A heady mixture of full moon, atmosphere and a rather nice bottle of vino lead to my promising Mrs H we would return and stay at the Danieli Hotel as a posh treat but after looking it up on the internet, 800 euros per night (off season) I was rather relieved she had no recollection the next morning.

A final selection of pics from Venice. Tomorrow thunderstorms threaten and we are off to Croatia.

Hard work blogging!

We came across the following scene of a large crowd gathered and hung around a while to see what was happening. Thinking that perhaps Brad Pitt or some other diva was about to appear it turns out this is the closest Venice comes to a gang fight. Two groups of musicians arrive by gondola on either side of the canal then the singers gather on each bank and proceed to sing seven shades of song out of each other. Absolutely marvellous. When each side had had a good singing everyone makes off before the cops get there.

Comacchio and Venice

First stop after Certaldo was Comacchio on the coast. Fairly decent campsite called Ancona with good facilities. Only downer was that, being on the coast it was very commercial and noisy with people enjoying themselves until about 11pm. Yes...you heard me ...enjoying themselves. I must say we got quite a chuckle at listening to the various karaoke turns from a quite impressive 'Dean Martin' sound-a-like to Sophie, who made such a good job of strangling Madonna's 'Like a Virgin' that the stage was declared a crime scene for about 20 minutes! But the most impressive turn of the night was the whole crowd, whatever nationality, singing Pink Floyds 'Brick in the Wall' perfectly in English. Brilliant!

Anyway, temperatures have continued to rise into late 30c and heaven knows what the humidity is but just lying in bed the sweat pours off of us. Sorry if that was too much detail. It all means we are going through vino quicker than the land rover is going through diesel!

Comacchio. A beautiful spot, very photographic with a great wetland wildlife area a few kilometres away. The perfect scenario for me.

One of the unfortunate things about the time we got to Comacchio was the time of day which for photography wasn't good. I did however spend a pleasant few hours photographing the remarkable reflections in the canals.

The trip from Comacchio to Venice was relatively straight forward on Italy's moderately priced motorways (compared to the extortion of France and Switzerland) but once off the paid road the quality of road surface is, like England, fast becoming a 4x4 paradise. That must be why our politicians prefer to fly everywhere!

Our sat nav had been pretty good up to now but once we hit road works in Mestre the poor old thing had a coronary attack which tended to raise the drivers blood pressure somewhat. If we heard sat nav say "recalculating" once we must have heard it 20 times in the space of 15 mines. It got so bad we had to switch on the air-con to cool the driver down. Mrs sat nav took over the map reading and manually guided us through although I didn't appreciate her calmly announcing "recalculating" if I went wrong to her instructions.

Having negotiated Mestre we arrived at our campsite in good time and what a little gem it is. Camping Miremare. Beautiful site, well laid out and loads of shade. It is very well serviced. There is even a man comes round to sweep away the leaves from your pitch! Very reasonably priced at 25 euro per night. It has free wifi internet (exceptionally fast) and a free bus to the ferry to Venice but it's only a 700 mtr walk.

Venice

We have been to Venice before but in February, and I think that is the best time to visit. The heat and crowds of summer considerably dampen the atmosphere. We are already planning another trip back here for the winter. Venice without the crowds in Feb/March is definately the way to go. Among the photos here you may notice the tourists who were caught in a torrential downpour of sunshine but fortunately they had their brollies with them!
Apart from the crowds and heat a photographer in venice has to struggle with the graffiti. I don't remember it being as bad last time but that was 12yrs ago. I'd gladly pay good money to see a graffiti artist executed at dawn each day!