Romantic Venice

Well, I have to say, Venice caught my attention, and personally I loved it. Different, unusual, beautiful, quirky, well looked after and maintained, scenic, colourful, busy, aimed at tourists yet full of Italians, and most importantly, it is romantic. Sights, sounds, smell and colours are outstanding.

When the sun is out, the colours of buildings almost sparkle, the canals glow green and blue, the gondoliers’ chatter echoes around the alleyways and despite the amount of tourists buzzing around, the place is quiet, sometimes eerie, sometimes acceptably noisy with chatter or music coming from apartments overhanging the streets or canals; the smells are of garlic, pizza, grilled meat, wine and beer, fresh sea water, not stinky smells as there may have been years ago. The place is sparklingly clean, an army of cleaners empty dustbins and sweep streets every half an hour in peak season!

The buildings are ornate, aged, colourful, interesting and different, not two buildings are the same. The Lagoon is always an aqua green colour and the views coming from the Cavallino peninsular to Venice was always stunning, one of my favourite images is of the skyline of Venice with its two towers.

The Cavallino peninsular is quite unusual, about 35 miles long, with 30 camping “villages” and about 20 hotels on the left, all edging out onto the Adriatic sea; on the right are lush agricultural fields inbetween small shopping centres, caravan storage area and huge car parks, where tourists gather for a coach journey to the port at the bottom of the island (Porto Sabbioni) to cross over to Venice.

Our camp site was accommodating and comfortable, the restaurant served fabulously tasty meals and the barman met with David’s approval, introducing him to Japanese whiskey! They opened a side gate for us to exit rather than zig zagging around parked cars and tree trunks!

We moved onto Trieste after 4 weeks in the area, leaving with happy memories and feel we would happily return again.