Italy - Venetia and the East Coast

Week 12 –20th to 26th August


Lido De Jesola


We entered Italy on the East coast so the first place to head was Venice; not feasible to camp in Venice itself we headed for a place called Lido De Jesola and decided to try and save some cash by staying in a camper stop (a free or low charge stopover with basic facilities). It didn’t really have a great feel about it, full of ‘pikeys’ to quote Andrew, though only 200m from the beach but when we wondered down there I think we were both expecting some sweet little cove and where somewhat dismayed to find deckchair and umbrella city spanning a huge stretch of coast…



Behind the beach was a long stretch of road full of bars, restaurants and tacky shops; we were not sure whether we had come to Italy or Benidorm! When in Rome however, so we did venture out that evening for a couple of Bevvies and some ‘entertaining’ music from a one-man band.

Cavallino

We only stayed the night and then moved on a little further down the coast to Cavallino, a long stretch of road with some 29 campsites; thank goodness we are travelling out of season! (Actually, still in August we are officially in season but it seems this year the unpredictable weather has hit of all Europe and quietened things down – that said, even if the Italians don’t think high 20’s is hot enough it suits us just grand!) We paid more for the site but had a decent pitch, a nice pool and bar and about 10m from a much prettier beach – so much so we stayed almost a week! On our last evening, to mark the start of a 2-day gondola-racing regatta, they staged a firework display all the way down the 12 km of beach; loving fireworks at the best of times it was actually a fantastic display and being able to see them go off all the way down the beach at the same time was amazing.




Venice

Our campsite was about half and hour outside of Venice by boat. The weather was beautiful and Venice was fantastic; definitely lives up to its reputation.

The view as we arrived...

Palazza Ducale; great square though they should adopt Ken Livingston’s principle and cull the pigeons, but for some unknown reason, many tourists went wild for them and photographed each other with the flying vermin all over themselves! Yes ok, I have a dislike of pigeons but surely there are better things to photograph in Venice!

The Basilica di San Marco; a truly magnificent building with its Romanesque carvings and mosaics. Unfortunately, even out of season, the queues were too long to for us to wait to go inside since we were only here for the day. We will surely come back to Venice for a long weekend and so will see inside then.

The Canal Grande – the main street; almost 4km long dividing the city in half, where most of the activity happens and where the majority of the most important palaces stand.





The canals and gondolos, which are everywhere…




Venice is a very cool city that we very much enjoyed and it didn’t smell! I guess it may do in the heat of summer – another good reason to visit out of season! It’s a great place to watch the world go by and just fab the way everything happens by boat!

Riccione

Making our way down the coast into the Emilia-Romagna region we made a stop near Rimini; someone had told it was a good place but the guidebooks likened it to Blackpool and Torremolinos. A bit of cheese can be good fun so we gave it a go, though staying a little way further on at Riccione. It was ok, we had a night out and it was a vibrant place though our restaurant of choice was very medioca with the worst service encountered so far!

Week 13 – 27th August to 2nd September

Porto Recanati / Silvi Marina

Nothing else really drew our attention in Emilia-Romagna so we continued down the coast into the Marche region. We were looking for a nice little coastal place to rest up for a few days but the coast here is average at best and, in attempt for a poor region to make money, commercial and built up where possible. We found a small campsite high up in the olive groves with a nice pool and so we stayed here for a few days and just chilled.

Andrew has very much taken to the swimming lark when previously a little unsure which is great…personally, I think its probably because at many pools here you have to wear a swimming cap which he models beautifully…

It was our original intention to travel all the way down the East coast and across the heel and toe of the boot. However, what we have seen so far in Italy (Venice being the exception) has not inspired us – the country clearly has a large divide between rich and poor; the vast majority of what we see is poor, reflected in high rises and desolate, very dirty surroundings (the use of bins doesn’t seem to be popular here), the landscape is flat and dull and anything geared towards tourists is heavily commercialised and tacky. Further reading about the East/South doesn’t enthuse us further and that, coupled with advice that the roads get pretty poor, which whilst not a problem in a car, is likely to be painful in the Lunar, we decide to cut across country to the West coast.