Venice and Sirmione, Lake Garda

Karrina’s Diary

After yesterdays San Marino and beach fun, today had a lot to live up to but we were all optimistic as we were heading to Venice to eat Cornettos and ride in a boat, we were also sure Venice would have tat shops.

The fun of Venice began straight away as the motorhome carpark was located at a people mover, for €1.30 each we got a ride on a monorail right into the centre.

Lucy giggled for approximately an hour, turns out she didn’t believe us that all the roads in Venice were water. The “can we go on a boat? Can we go on a boat? Can we go on a boat?” began and lasted longer than the giggling.

We picked a very traditional looking cafe called Gino’s for lunch where Lucy ate her 8th pizza of the trip, she is still insisting on trying to eat pizza everyday. I have tried to change her mind by telling her if she carries on when she gets to Germany she has to change it to Bratwurst everyday!

After lunch we randomly followed tourists and ended up in a large square (St Mark’s square, Neil told me that) where people were taking photos, I again joined in having no idea a what I was photographizing but it looked good. Garf was tricked into buying Amy yet another rose from a lookie lookie man, she promised to look after this one.

Venice is full of shops selling Venetian masks, Lucy chose quite a modest one which she wore for the rest of the day. I had been very nervous as we walked up to the stall which I’d agreed to buy her one from as I was sure she was going to go for the biggest with huge pink feathers.

After a few hours wondering round we found a very busy looking waterway with luckily cheaper boat ride than the €80 per person they wanted for a gondola. Neil tried to haggle but the Italian helmsman said he’d already let Lucy go free as she was cute so €15 each for adults was as low as he’d go. Chuffed with that we all jumped on our own private little wooden vessel for the tour.

As we motored through Venice on our boat we waved and sang (this was far better than a man with a stick) we even got some waves back. So far this has to have been Lucy’s favourite part of the trip and she did not want to get off the boat at the end.
Our friendly captain even dropped us off at our motorhome parking, this we did not expect.

Back at the van we decided that we’d pretty much seen and done all there was to do in Venice so thought we’d confuse Edwin following our tracker back at home and get ahead of schedule by heading off to Lake Garda.

The drive to the lake was mostly motorway and tolls quite uneventful other than me trying to haggle with the automated toll booths. We arrived in a lovely stopover right on the edge of Lake Garda, Lucy immediately asked if I’d packed her swimmers as she wanted to go in. I suggested she just feed the ducks and swans instead.

Once we’d set up we set about looking for the castle which was mentioned in a write up about the site. The castle couldn’t be missed, it was the amazing entrance to an area of restaurants and bars we spent a while here before heading back to bed.