Dimaro, Italy

Dimaro, Italy, Friday (20/5/05)

I am sitting here typing, looking out the balcony door of our hotel at the snow covered peaks of Mount Brenta (photo below)...



Here is what has happened between here and Florence...

Ravena, Tuesday

We say goodbye to Florence and make our way towards Rimini. The plan was to take the scenic route (green road on our map) through Stia, Arezzo and then up through San Marino.

Although the GPS is good, I have it only telling me the right direction to go in, and scenic roads normally mean winding mountain roads. So we get lost, following an Italian road sign which was intended for veiwing from another direction. Although we were still heading in the right direction, the wrong road also had road works blocking it completely. We lost about an hour backtracking and decided to give Rimini a miss and go to Revanna (closer to Venice).

Again luck is on ourside, we travel again through amazing mountains, so high that we are in the cloud. We also have one of our best meals in Stia, eating the local specialties (a lot of sheeps cheese, honey, bread).




Venice, Wednesday + Thursday

From Ravenna we followed the straight road to Venise. Not very pretty and full of potholes. We managed to get ahead of the trucks at lights, which was at least some compensation.

In Venice we went to a "camping in town" campsite because we had a 10% discount voucher from Florence. Turned out though that the "town" we were camping in was not Venice but a couple of towns away and next to the airport. There was a bus service and cabins, so we decided to stay (however I would not recommend doing this yourself).

While Laura read a book, I went and checked out Venice and found that there is scooter parking on Venice (although we did not use this knowledge later). I also checked out a local scooter shop as I really want to know why no one rides Gillera Nexus scooters. No luck, he did not speack English (however they cost 6,900 euro which is 900 more than the Piaggio equivalent).

After that, Laura and I hit Venice by bus. We took a ferry ride and a walk around. Venice is very beautiful, also if you are careful where you buy stuff, it is not "that" much more than elsewhere in Italy I.e. expensive (though watch the tricks... Iwe got charged 12% service charge, plus two cover charges - I think we were ripped off but I didn't have a chance to check with the tourist office).

Thursday we spent the whole day in Venice. We also did the big 3 course Italian lunch. Laura was too full to finish, so we skipped the desert.

Venice is definitely a highlight, I will let the pictures say the rest...


What people come to Venice for, the Venetian blinds


A boat


Another boat


Dimaro (Today)

From Venice, we headed towards Brescia, again via the scenic route. It turned out that the scenic route was quicker than the direct route. Fast, winding mountain roads, through outstanding scenery. We decided just to carry on the way we are heading and not bother going back to the non scenic way, so tomorrow we will be in Switzerland!