We’ve spent a couple of days in the area of Venice, Italy. Obviously there’s nowhere suitable to park a 8 metre long motorhome in Venice so the first question was where to stay. There are a few campgrounds on the land side of Venice, but we decided that it’d be more fun to stay across the lagoon from Venice in a small town called Punta Sabbioni. It’s possible to get a ferry more-or-less directly from there to San Marco Piazza in Venice – which is what we did.

We found a rather nice camping ground that also happened to be closest to the ferry terminal. We rolled on in and were invited to park “where-ever we like” – as the place was literally empty. Another motorhome arrived about 5 minutes later, and that was pretty much “it” for that night.

Apparently it’s a holiday weekend here – because the following night the place was almost full. There were about 24 motorhomes all lined up. Most of them containing Italian families. Apparently going to Venice for the weekend is what you do if you live in the greater area and you have a long weekend available.

Our first day in Venice was spent doing what countless tourists before us have done – arriving in San Marco Piazza and attempting to follow the Lonely Planet walk through the maze that is Venice. This was somewhat harder than it could have been due to the mismatch between the instructions in LP, the map in LP, and what the streets are actually named! However we managed (by good luck or good management – we’re not sure which) to figure it out and mostly end up in the right place.

We finished our first day by going to the railway station at one end of the Grand Canal, and catching a number 1 water-bus all the way down the Grand Canal and across the Lagoon to Lido. From there it was one more ferry hop to Punta Sabbioni.

Our second day was spent island hopping. We decided to go and have a look at the two islands close to Venice that are known for lace making (Burano) and glass-blowing (Murano). Our first stop was Burano. Venice is visually rather mono-chromatic with respect to it’s buildings. Everything is some shade of stone or marble. Burano couldn’t be more different. Most of the houses on the island are painted a wide range of colours. It would appear that the locals have chosen the brightest and most contrasting colour for their houses. The whole place is a wonderful riot of colour. It’s a small collection of islands, but it was busy enough.

Then we hopped on another boat and made our way to Murano. Our first stop was a restaurant for lunch. Once again our “choose the busiest place we can find” algorithm worked well. We had to wait 10 minutes for a table, but it proved to be 10 minutes well spent – as the meal was fabulous. Nicky and I had the mixed fish grill while the girls had pasta. I’m beginning to understand just how GOOD the Italian ragu is compared to what we call Spaghetti Bolognase.

We tried to find something interesting in the glass blowing department once we’d finished lunch, but there wasn’t much happening – or at least we didn’t have any luck finding anything. So we boarded another ferry and made our way to Venice, and once again negotiated our way through the maze to San Marco Piazza and caught a ferry home.

Brian