Venice was a one day visit during an eight day stay at Marina di Venezia, a site near Jesolo on a spit of land which runs along the Venetian coast, east of Venice. The campsite could not have been further removed from the tranquility of Camping Mer de Glace. It had five pools, a private beach, nightly entertainments, a supermarket, shoe shop, hairdressers, bookstore, four restaurants...and was just a 40 minute water taxi ride from the heart of Venice.
Venice exceeded our expectations in bucketloads - it wasn't smelly for starters. It was incredibly hot, and tourists were in abundance, and tat was everywhere, but if you avoided St Mark's Square and the Rialto Bridge and all points inbetween along the Grand Canal you could find shade, and solace, and beautiful side streets, and incredible art.
This is us on our gondola ride...
Highlights of a stunning day out were the aforementioned gondola ride (had to be done but not cheap at 80 Euros for 40 minutes) but also a brilliant two hours exploring the home and art collection of Peggy Guggenheim. She was a fascinating lifeforce and is well worth reading about. In a nutshell, she was from a wealthy NewYork family, her father died aboard the Titanic, she started collecting art as a hobby and amassed works by pretty much every 20th century artist of renown, had a voracious sexual appetite, reputedly sleeping with more than 1,000 men, was married three times to artists and writers, including to Max Ernst, and loved dogs (her ashes are interred alongside a memorial to all the dogs she had doted on in her life.) We were only able to take photos in the gardens but the galleries inside include works by all of the greats...Picasso, Pollock, Miro, Duchamp, Dali, Kandinsky, Klee, Magritte.
We made a fleeting visit to St Mark's Square and journeyed up and down the Grand Canal by water taxi, but as much as possible tried to explore the side streets, often getting lost but always finding our way back to civilisation eventually.
