Monday 29th April
We left the UNESCO town of Idrija with a head full of knowledge and headed towards our final stop in Slovenia, Lipica.
We couldn’t leave without visiting the Stud Farm where they breed the Lipizzaner horses.
They let us stay in the car park overnight for free so we could visit the following morning.
They’ve been breeding the beautiful white horses since the 1500’s and although we’re not “horsey people”, we were very impressed with the place. We were given a personal guided tour around the estate (probably because we were the only English speaking tourists there). The lady explained how the foals stayed with their mothers for 3 years, then they go to school. Only the best stallions are used for dressage and the mares go on to pull carriages.
Those stallions which make it all the way to the top of the dressage class, get to stay in the poshest stables because, after all, they’ve earned it.
Our favourite part was looking at the foals with their long gangly legs.
On the way out we visited the Carriage Museum.
Lipica is very near the border of Italy, our 28th country, so it was big decision time. Did we visit the seaside town of Trieste or drive on to Venice??
Consulting the weather oracle, we saw there was a 3 day sunny weather window coming up in Venice so that’s where we headed. I was secretly pleased as Venice had been on my bucket list as long as I can remember.
We found a great little secure campsite/sosta at San Guilliano (€18 per 24hours). And only a 100m walk to the Marive transport ferryboat that goes straight to Venice in 20 minutes.
The next day, after a smooth crossing, we were on the Island of Venice. We walked along the canals, over the bridges and through the streets until we got to the Rialto Bridge.
We passed numerous designer shops, shops selling Murano glass and the famous carnival masks, and our favourite, ones selling chocolates. The free samples were gorgeous, especially the ones tasting of limoncello. I half expected to see James Bond and Vespa walk round the next corner lol.
We loved leaning up against the little stone bridges watching the Gondolas and we spent ages watching the locals getting on with their everyday lives.
They used the boats like we would use cars. DHL delivering parcels, Ambulance and Police boats speeding along with their sirens blasting. It was great fun.
The second day we got up extra early hoping to catch the boat to Murano. We hadn’t realised that May 1st was a bank holiday. The man on the boat told us everywhere would be closed, so instead, we had another fabulous day walking around Venice in the sunshine. We visited the Doges Palace and bought tickets for the water bus.
The Doges Palace is in St Marks Square and is very impressive both on the inside & out. A fire partially destroyed it in the 10th century, and so it was reconstructed by Doge Sebastiano Ziani. It is connected to the prison on the other side of the canal by the Bridge of Sighs. The prisoners, after being sentenced in the Palace, would be taken through the Bridge of Sighs to be locked away for their crimes, probably doing more than sighing I should imagine. The Palace interiors, especially the ceilings, were amazing.
The prison on the other hand ...
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| Inside the Bridge of Sighs |
In the afternoon we sailed around Venice on the water bus, up the Grand canal and out to the Lido.
We walked around St Marks Square again and marvelled at all the buildings including the Basilica and the Campanile.
We took photos, (along with hundreds of other people), of the Bridge of Sighs ...
... and went in the poshest Spar shop either of us has ever seen!
We walked through loads of narrow side streets and into hidden palazzo’s looking in churches and shop windows on our way back to Hotel Harriet, in our opinion, the best hotel in town.
On our return we learnt that in Venice there are about 15,000 buildings, among them 900 palaces and 105 churches. They are all built upon millions of tree-trunks (10 - 30 feet long), which are driven through the soft material into the solid ground of the lagoon. These buildings spread over more than 120 islands. Some 400 bridges span the 177 canals that separate these islands. The 2-mile-long (3 km) Canal Grande, shaped like a huge question mark, divides the city into two parts of almost equal size.
Thursday, we walked to St Marks Square again as it’s so beautiful.
We’d walked through all the little streets to get there stopping off at one of the food shops to buy sandwiches. (Which turned out to be delicious). They also sold pizza slices by the weight.
In the square, the queues to get in to the Basilica were huge, and so was the queue to go up St Marks Campanile, so we got on one of the ACTV water buses and visited Murano instead.
The island of Murano is famous the world over for its glass.
We visited one of the glass blowing demonstrations
and walked around the town looking in all the shops selling the beautiful glass pieces. There was everything, from chandeliers to tiny animals, from exquisite art pieces to photo frames.
We ate our lunch in the square by the church and then visited the interior, marvelling at all the patterns on the floor made from different coloured marble.
On the way back we found even more narrow streets to explore and stopped off for an Italian Irn Bru (spritz) before returning to Harriet, shattered but happy!
Although there was so much more to see, we left Venice as we needed a rest day.
We headed for Padova and the Sosta just on the outskirts of town. What a fab place to stay. It was an extension of the car park with a tram stop. Bit like a park and ride. It was fenced off with a barrier and cost €8 for 24 hours. It had water and waste facilities that were checked regularly and cleaned as necessary by the little council van that came round.
There was a large supermarket just over the road too which turned out to be very dog friendly lol.
We spent 2 nights there and on Sunday, because of the torrential rain, we drove to a launderette 9 miles away to do the washing, then returned to the Sosta Pontevigodarzere in Padova.
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