The Italian Blog
In early May 2009 we set off on an exploration of the Italian Lakes with Venice thrown in for good measure. When we travel to Italy we tend to travel down through Germany and Austria but this time we decided to go via the Tunnel de Frejus so most of the initial journey was through France. Now I am not overly keen on long tunnels and 13kms is long! There was an alternative and that was to use the Mont du Cenis Pass but Margaret is not keen on mountain passes. The decision was for us because on the day we were due to cross into Italy the Cenis Pass was not yet open. It was dull and damp as we made our way to the tunnel and paid our €44 which was a shock in itself! Fortunately the tunnel was fine and we came out on the Italian side in sunshine. I should have said the reason for using the Frejus Tunnel was that our initial stop in Italy was to be on Lake Maggiore.
Maggiore and Como seem to be not as frenetic as Lake Garda and they are all have different characters. From Lake Garda we made our way to Venice a particular favourite of ours. This was our third visit but this time we stayed at Ca Savio rather than Punta Sabbioni which meant we had to take the car or the bus to catch the ferry. There is always something magical about arriving at San Marco or St Marks by water. A special treat for us was a visit La Felice the Opera House that had recently been completely restored after a devastating fire a few years earlier.
Time to start the journey home. Rather than take the motorway we cut across country to Levico Terme where we stayed a few days. From here we made our way to Austria and a campsite almost next door to the famous Monastery at Stams. From here we made our way into Germany via the Fern Pass stopping for a few more days at Trippstadt near Kaiserslautern. Two more short stops and we were back near Calais ready for the journey home.
The full blog can be seen here with lots of photographs.
Comments
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The magnificent Italy! Always wanted to visit it.
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Italy - one of our favourite destinations. We first discovered the joys of Tuscany and Umbria on our first trip in the Motorhome to the Pelopenese, Greece in 2006. We fell in love with Lake Trasimemo in Umbria and have returned many times since, staying
at Camping Listro in Castiglione del Lago. From here we can easily get the train to Rome, Siena, Florence and many other well known Italian cities and hill towns - all within 2 hours and very economical.Despite numerous trips, taking varied routes to/from the UK we finally got around to visiting Venice on our return trip in June this year and we were so glad we did!
Venice gets very busy, but we stayed at Camping Fusina, right alongside the Fusina ferry terminal and got the first boat out in the morning at 8am. 30 minutes later and we were admiring the rows of colourful Venetian Gondolas waiting to carry well healed
(mostly Japanese) tourists through the canals.We bought 24 hour ferry/water taxi tickets for 26 euros each, allowing us to hop on and off the ferry and various water taxis throughout Venice all day - well worth it to save your feet And includes the islands.
Our early start meant we were amongst the first in the queue to enter San Marcos when it opens at 10am and secured a seat right at the front of a water taxi to cruise the entire length of the Grand Canal before the afternoon rush began.
The highlight of the trip was arriving at what we thought would be just a rough campsite alongside the huge oil refinery, to be greeted by a fabulous, well equipped oasis and ushered to the waterfront pitches for Motorhomes where we had uninterrupted views
of Venice skyline, together with plenty of boat watching over a glass of wine by the water's edge.Simply awesome and thoroughly recommended. But do take a day to relax by the water at the Campsite after you've visited Venice as you might need to recuperate and it's well worth watching the huge cargo ships and luxury yachts
sail past within meters of your pitch!0
