Venice to Pesaro and Fano

It was Polenta, Jon's dish that he couldn't remember the name of but which conjured up fond memories of Sainsbury's....

In Venice, the campsite is the most touristy place we've stayed. Club Waikiki 18 to 35 buses very much in evidence. They're beginning their drinking contests and mass frisbee just as we're heading off to brush our teeth and turn in for the night. Urbanites that we are, we doze off during the yard-of-ale whoops but are kept awake by the regular hoot of solitary owl amongst the trees. It's on-the-second toots sound to us like a vehicle-reversing warning and we're convinced it's coming from the huge cargo ferries that loom past the caravans parked on the shore. It takes us 2 days to work out it's a natural phenomenon, though we decide against throwing a stone at it and eventually sleep through.
The next day, we're up and at 'em for the 10am vaporetta to the city, 20 mins away. We're arriving, as Marco Polo would've intended, by sea. We got bitten a bit last night as the mozzies are out in force here, with the water and a good deal of heat. (Hallelujah!)

The sight of Venice across the water gives me a tingle of excitement, a bit like seeing a cartoon place come to life. Got the same feeling when I first claped eyes on Big Ben... The city is predicatably stunning. Gondaliers take the well-heeled around the waterways, ducking their heads under the minute bridges. We stop for an espresso at Piazza San Marco, avoiding the place that charges and extra E6 each for the musical accompaniment of a makeshift quartet. There are people hanging around the vast porticoes escaping the heat that is seeping from the paving stones. The queues for the Basilica are only half-an-hour long, and we manage to get a butchers at the gold, mosaics, emeralds, rubies etc before the main throng descends. St Mark's body was thieved by the founders of Vencie from Alexandria in 828 in order to secure status for the city and get the pilgrim's dosh. Sorry for scanty history...it is very beautiful and worth a look.
The rest of the day we wander the streets, escaping the noise and crowds down some shady backstreet only to backtrack and be out in the light and noise of another busy small campo. It is endlessly surprising. We escape the heat of the Rialto Bridge by gorging on a couple of mammoth ice-creams and espressi. Make our way back to the boat and the Cyberbus at the campsite, an old Routemaster, hot with PCs. It's been quite hard to find internet caffs so and the little laptop we've brought has been so tempremental, we've debated throwing it in the sea so we've not managed to upload our photos since Prague. We decide to avoid the Wakiki lot and eat at the restaurant. Get quite excited at the appearance of a small rat, beaten out of the restaurant with a broom. Rats are aplenty in Venice apparently.

Another moving on day and we are slightly alarmed to find our cashpoint cards are no longer working; mine yesterday and Jon's today. Panic starts to set in when J's Visa is also kaput and we can't get through to Int Directory Enqs to get the bank's number. My thoughts of pleading for help at the British Consul are temporarily dampened by J reminding me he is German. We work out it's some kind of security measure by Natwest as we've been out of the UK exactly a month and a quick call home later, thanks Christine, we are able to get the cards unlocked. Temporarily having no money, if only for a couple of hours, makes us realise how useless at the real back-packery thing we'd be.
Pitched up in Ferrara, an old broad sweeping university city, a 100miles or so from Venice. Two wheels rule here, and we make our way across the cobbly expanses on bikes. The city is totally surrounded by 14km of v. intact city wall,. It has a pretty medieval quarter and a few likely looking bars. The city run campsite is virtually empty. 1 night stoppers on way to Venice or Bologna, rarely look at the town. Ferrara was built by the Este Family, an eccentric powerful renaissance dynasty, renowned for supporting local artists and poisoning their enemies. In the 15th Century, the city was handed over to the papacy when no Este heirs were available to take over and it was found deserted, with mosquito clogged canals, remaining a ghost town right up until the 19th C . It's got its act together now and feels really young and vibranty, a real city, oblivious to tourists and what we've been looking for. We get chatting to 2 Dutch cyclists who are touring the country marginally faster than we are on their bikes, heading to Florence and staying in youth hostels, all the while carrying only 6kg apiece. The food is good here too, though we've never been able to eat the full 3 courses and stick to the antipasti and primo. We have a nightcap in the small piazza bar before cycling home in the dark. The drivers are generously giving us a wideberth. Back at base we're a bit dismayed as the humidity of the day turns into a massive thunderstorm, clattering on the roof like never before.
The next day dawns dull and grey and wet and we bicicilette it into town but it's siesta and many of the shops are closed. We've missed the lunch sitting meaning a wait until 6 or 7 before the restaurants open again. We've still not quite got into the rhythm of lunching at 12 to 2 then eating late in the eavening. We are usually full from breakfast then ravenous by 5. There are free snacks aplenty at all the bars though so you don't go nil-by-mouth for long. Though these can range from a plate of stale crisps to a splendid platter of hams, mozzerella and smoked fish.
That night we manage to eat a meal in an Osteria that has a groaning library full of wine. 3 are thrown in on the tasting menu, where we eat Pasticcies, a sort of big pastie with sweet pastry and filled with macaroni, more to my taste then Jon's. We then have salty local sausage n mash and a strange heavy chocolatey-nut bread for afters. We cycle home quickly while there's a temporary break in the clouds but it starts storming again overnight, which at last breeches Vera's defences and water starts dripping around our heads. This is quickly rectified by Jon, a few pegs and a binliner but we have a fitful sleep and are gloomy at the prospect of another Soyen week, now a by-phrase for chucking it down endlessly.
Up early next day for the 30min train journey to Bologna, a very big beautiful busy city with porticoes designed to be big enough to do your shopping on horseback, though this is less popular these days. I am constantly stunned by the scale of cities in Italy with their vast squares, endless streets, giant churches. We wander for miles into the seedy quarter where we find ourselves stopping to look on a map on what seems to be a bit of a hoody corner. Make our way back to more populated area, eating barsnacks all the while. (We've missed the luncthime and are too early for the evening meals, damn our timings...) Salivate at the food stalls, selling fish, joints of ham, squeaky veg. Back at Ferrara and the evening's brightened up but it's strangely quiet coz of the bank holiday student exodus. Or so we think. It's hard to get to grips with the rhythm of cities sometimes.

Decamp and head 70 miles out to the Adriatic coast, where we are camping at the holiday resort called Lido Degli Scacchi, just outside fishing town of Commachio. Still very much in the flat marshlands of the Po Delta so the scenery is non-existent. The main draw here is the beach and we are right beside it. We've perfected our setup time to about 10 minutes. The main tasks of Windows, Awning, Roof, and Table now go under the name of Operation WART. Such is our military precision, we joke that it's only a matter of time before we start wearing army camouflage and blackening our faces.

WART completed, we find the campsite is vv crowded; we are cheek-by-jowl with our neighbours and it feels a bit like a shanty-town. We do a few days of lazing at the beach, eating at the lovely beachside restaurant and having our first barbecue. We buy 2 new directors chairs and Jon has comandeered one of the old broken chairs as a footrest, having got a alien-like blister on his foot from trudging round Bologna. Go for a night stroll and see the onsite entertainment, which ranges from enmasse Macarena to a late-night accordian polka. This not being our particular bag, we resort to playing quite a lot of Triv and Jack Change It. Despite feeling quite content and used to having little space and few belongings, we're agreed that campsites aren't exactly the most stimulating of places. I feel like I've gone deaf because I can't understand what people are saying, and I think that I rely on a bit of stimuli to spark off ideas thoughts and actions. Jon says that little dramas are happening all around you and you only have to look. By night 3 of the Babydance and beach volleyball announcements, the local Rotary Club have packed out the restaurant and we decide we need another beach but with a town in close proximity. We go 100miles or so through the rain and stop between 2 coastal-but-historic towns Fano and Pesaro, the latter twinned with Watford. Both are sprawling, walled, built in the Roman The site has a bit of feel of an ex-Soviet holiday camp, stretching so long and grassless from end to end that we take to cycling down to the reception and back to save our legs. We soon settle in to the area, making good use of the cycle route that leads into twin-of-Watford (they were so similar...)
One night we discover a little courtyard where a Jazz band are playing. We stay out a bit later than normal and miss the last bus, fail to find a taxi, and end up walking 4 miles or so along a creepy beach, most of it in a huff with each other after an argument about international directory enquires. Climb over the fence at the camp, which has been locked and collapse into bed exhausted.
The weekend sees the sight fill up a little and a couple with a small fox-like orange dog pitch up opposite. Their little pet, at first cute and friendly, seems to be hellbent on cocking his leg everywhere, against the van, the bikes. He even manages to kill off Charlie our pet chives who had travelled with us from Bavaria, who we had placed outside at every stop and who we'd seen begin to flower. Charlie had become our constant in a changing world, but we didn't feel we could use him after the leg-cocking incident. We move the laundry inside to ensure it doesn't suffer the same fate. I buy a hair dye here and touch up my roots. It comes out a vibrant orange, the same colour as that dog.