Venice, Italy

Saturday 3rd November 2007 International Camping, Venice
We watched from our tent as an obviously new camper van was being leveled by a husband watched by a critical wife. We couldn't hear anything, but the body language was obvious. He had stabilized the front, but too high, while she kept checking to see if it was level (it must have had a level inside on the cupboard) while he cranked and cranked the back higher and higher. Eventually she took over the cranking, then suddenly limped off rubbing her knee the crank handle having come off and knocked her knee. They got a big hammer and knocked bocks underneath the wheels, which attracted a bigger audience, and just served to push the blocks into the ground while not raising the camper at all, amid much Italian arm-gesticulations. We laughed for ages.
Nev did the washing this morning (as he usually does), he hung it up to dry and we prepared to leave to catch the ferry to Venice again. He couldn't find the tickets and eventually, muttering and swearing, came around the Landy with little pieces of soggy paper in his hand. We had to buy new tickets.
Nev said "when in Venice do as the Venezuelans do", so we wondered around Venice, soaking up the atmosphere and getting lost and taking it easy trying to decide whether to send the Landy home or leave it here. Internets are very expensive R100/hr, in Tunisia R5/hr.
Everyone is walled in either for security or privacy and they all have burglar guards on the windows which surprises us as crime does not seem to be a problem. There are HUGE mozzies here, although there is snow on the mountains in the distance, and they are still nipping us.
Today we are off to Slovinia.

Friday 2nd November 2007 International Camping Venice
We traveled towards Venice over the Po River and although we are 100Km from the sea, we are only 2m above sea level. The area is flat flat flat, and they grow maize, wheat, lots of orchards and vines and the lands extend for kilometers. The rivers are above land level and are canalized, with dykes to prevent flooding. There were signs of flood irrigation.
In the afternoon we went from the campsite via a ferry to Venice. 20m from our Landy huge ships pass up and down a deepened canal at the edge of the bay to the harbour. We can see the skyline and buildings of Venice over the bay from our campsite.
Venice is similar to Zanzibar with its narrow, windy streets and lots of little shops and hotels. The difference is that Venice is first world, (and has canals) whereas Zanzibar is 3rd (or 8th). There were 1000s of tourists. We gazed at all the artistic glassware, artwork, masks, chocolates, clothing, and gaped at the prices. It cost R10 to go to the loo.
We arrived back to a chilly cloudless camp, like May weather at home.

Thursday 1st November 2007 AND Wednesday 31st October 2007
International Camping, Firenze (Florence)
We traveled to Florence from Rome through hilly, Autumn coloured forests with very little agriculture and we wondered where the Italians were growing their food. Just before Florence the land flattened out. The soil is full of clay and the farmers battle with the hard lumps when ploughing. We arrived at Florence in the afternoon and had a violent thunderstorm and it poured with rain, but the next morning was cold and clear and we did the Florence thing. By this time we had seen enough of churches, having seen the best at the Vatican.
The statues of course were stunning, especially the bronzes and the marbles. Somehow we missed seeing 'David', but saw a monestary with parchment (calf-skin) books from 1200 years ago. Anything beautiful or lasting has some connection with religion, whether Christian here, or Muslem in Egypt, or ancient tombs in North Africa.
Florence is a very beautiful city, not as good as Rome though, with clean, cobbled streets. We had to catch a bus into Florence and back and nearly froze to death waiting for it on the return journey. We had decided to start walking home when it came, luckily because the campsite was 6Km away. We bought a book about the Medici family to acquaint ourselves with the history of banking there.

Tuesday 30th October 2007 AND Monday 29th October 2007
Happy Campers, Rome
We did the 'tourist in Rome' thing. Nev really battled. Up to now he has been a traveler, now he feels like a tourist. We feel we did the trip from the right direction because Rome is the pinnacle of the ancient civilization, although many ruins in Egypt and Libya are in better condition.
The campsite provides a shuttle service every half hour to the train which gets you to the underground, which takes you nearly everywhere in Rome, and from there you can take busses. Very easy, but we walked and walked and came back to nurse blisters. The Colosseum is awe-inspiring in its enormity, still being restored. Then we stopped looking at ruins as we were all ruined-out by this time. We paid R50 each for huge delicious ice creams and ate them watching the Trevi fountain, which had been cleaned of the red paint by then.
Even Nev agrees that in the Vatican the decoration and architecture in St Paul's Basilica is truly awesome, and the paintings of Raphael and Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel are worth the wait in the two-hour long queues. All the tour groups were walking through the long corridor called 'Raphael's Logge' looking up at the ceiling and looking at the paintings on the walls, not noticing that if they stopped and turned around, all the paintings would make sense and not appear upside down. We met two New Zealanders there whom we had met before, Paula and John McClean who agreed that we should be walking in the opposite direction.
Rome Centre is quite compact and every piazza has a beautiful water feature. The streets are cobbled and the alleys narrow. You can walk across the heavily trafficked road at any zebra crossing and the cars all stop to let you pass. Luckily Nev didn't drive in Rome, he would have forgotten to stop.

In Italy now, the fashion is to wear black, no colour, and when it rained all the old colourful raincoats, umbrellas etc were hauled out, although when we passed all the fashion houses at the Piazza de Spagna, colour for the coming winter was again being displayed

Sunday 28th October 2007 Happy Campers, Rome
The Italians had the last laugh. They went to Ethiopia and taught them how to make bathrooms with toilets and showers and a drainage point in the middle of the floor. Then the Ethiopians drove them out before they told them their secret, and the Italians left them to wallow in their own sh.. and sewerage. The secret: a little water trap in the drains to prevent the smells coming up from the sewerage pipes.
We drove up the long windy road to near the top of Vesuvius and had to walk up the last kilometer. There is no crater lake although the crater is very steep and deep, 460m across, but there are 'fumeroles', (smouldering whisps of sulpherous gas). Before it erupted in 79AD there were earthquakes and the Pompei-ans used to run into the street, put their hands up and ask the gods for forgiveness, and of course the earthquakes would stop after 45 seconds. When the fatal eruption occurred they thought the gods were very angry and so it caught them unexpectedly.
Then we found out that the saying is correct. All roads do lead to Rome, even from Sudan's Wadi Halfa which felt like the end of the world.
Happy Campers is one of the best serviced campsite since Warmbaths in SA.