2018 Feb 22-25: Outside-Venice: Lake Garda, Mt Baldo, Verona (at night)

This is part 2. Saturday, 24 of Feb. The first part, just Venice, is here.

Venice, a sinking, surprisingly chilly, wet mess.  Time to get out of town and explore some real nature. Of the outings possible,  the one to Lake Garda seemed best (despite the 3 hr combo train and bus ride), in part due to finding a hiking route from a town  (Malcesine) where one could ride up to the mountain top (Mt. Baldo, ht 1760m), so great view and sunshine even if hiking proved impossible.

Would be nice to go back in the summer, fly into Venice and immediately get out of town and do something like cycle the prosecco route to Valdobbiadene.

The bus travel was actually very simple because the "transfer" in Garda was actually just the bus waiting a few minutes and then changing its name.

Route was:

• Train from Venice to Verona
• Bus from Verona to Garda (Line 165/Line 164)
• (which became) Bus from Garda to Malcesine (Line 483/484)

[Mt Baldo: stunning views, no skiing for me]

Video of going down the mountain later, into the clouds. 

Once on top of the mountain (in the middle of the trip, decided to go up to the top, and some kind people charged us not quite the full rate to fix our tickets) , took a quick break to change into hiking boots and rain pants (in case falling in snow) and warm up a bit. View from the restaurant there:



The views were just incredible. There was a natural, rather short, route to walk along where people were skiing (we followed the family who had brought their dog along instead of their skis).

Near the restaurant:



A bit further from the restaurant, one could take a short break and look down at Lake Garda and appreciate the view and the sunshine, above the clouds (which later rolled in a little, but at a lower elevation). Here is very quick video with the same view, panning left to right.



Here is the view from close to the edge of the walk:



I really like the following picture. The walk ended at some fencing. Some people decided to keep walking further, but I think they had snowshoes and maybe an utter lack of self preservation (the descent was rather steep!). The sign clearly directs you to what is likely in summer months a nice hiking path into the valley.



Me sitting on the fencing, Garda lake behind me.

[Walk down from Mt. Baldo, Malcesine]

Took the sky-gondola down the mountain to the middle stop and hiked down from there. It was warm enough to take off the extra outer layers (necessary also in Venice!) and also the thermal trousers. The walk was mostly well signed, used some open street maps to correct when a bit lost.

Views up the mountain: 

Another mountain view:




Warm enough that succulents are doing well in people´s gardens:




Once in Malcesine, walked around their old town and up to the castle (which you can see in both  pictures, at the edge of land/town):



View from Castle in Malcesine:

[Walk around nighttime Verona]

Ended up doing dinner as a picnic in the train home, ended up wandering around Verona at night.
Verona also has an airport with lowcost flights from Frankfurt, and it is a lively (and clearly rich) city, which has also clearly been right a long time. The shopping streets were mainly Italian designers. The buildings were old but well maintained. Lots of young people out enjoying an apero and snacks, or later dinner.



Juliet's balcony was well-visited, and the statue of her had its boobs polished to quite a shine. People had covered all the walls with graffiti, which was being fought in some efforts by the city. The former home of Romeo was more battened down or maybe inhabited than hers. Included picture of people getting pictures with the Juliet statue. There was quite a line. I was not interested.




Cool shop windows (felt more like homes than shops, from layout or furniture quality or art):



Got back to Venice, slept, went to the mainland for Brunch, had some running around that had to be done to make it to the airport, made it home safely. Mainlaind by Venice was not very photogenic.

Ciao and until next time.

2018 Feb 22-25: Venice (part 1)

For the impatient, all pictures may be found in this album on flickr. 

At the end of February, I had earmarked some time to go on a trip, which I decided to go ahead and do despite some complications in life, which also made picking the destination rather last minute and slightly dependent on luck with flight search engines.

Venice had the cheapest airfare and shortest flight (and easiest way from the airport), and is one of those things one should see before they become entirely submerged and unlivable in the next 50 years or so.

Thus, Venice in February, after the Carnival, with its 2wks/1 month of masked balls.

hand made masks on display in a shop

[Thursday: Arrival]

Maybe the post-festivities energy drain lead to some of the feel. The rest was likely the weather, and the general feel of Venice to be a floating sarcophagus, a museum of a city, with no real residents, no local children, no schools.

Stepping of the rather short flight resulted in immediately being drenched with cold rain and battered around by winds that snaked around buildings and along canals. This was not an auspicious start. Some of the evening was used for getting back to the mainland to a store to buy rain pants and a cheap rain jacket to throw atop the semi-permeable one I had brought along.

Stayed at Alberghiera Venezia  (positives: floor heating, big windows, kitchen, comfy bed (firmish mattress), very thick walls, clearly recently renovated. Like staying in your own rather nice apartment)

Discovered that the train station has a really great sandwich/snack shop of which I wanted to eat everything, it looked so delicious:

[Friday: Seeing Venice. Water taxi, Cathedral, Bridges]

The thing you should do in Venice for sure is take one of the water taxis. 

It is hard to convey how surreal they are.

As a warm up, here is a picture of a boat designed for construction-y type use. Like a Venetian digger/crane/whatever they are called.

• A short video of the trip which I took.
• Another short video. 

Some pictures from the water taxi: 

There is a neat art installation highlight the general sinking state of Venice:

Landed at the canonical place, near the canonical church. 

 Walked by the market which was shutting down, and took a lot of pictures of seagulls fighting over the scraps. 

The water is a weird greenblue. It really offsets the bright buildings well. And the sort of dilapidation as well.

Walking around (and up and down the many bridges):

Came across some stores with lovely store fronts. One had four displays of people-sized people doing various crafty/artisanal things. 

Another cool shop window, full of jellyfish lamps:

Turns out, there is only one disco in Venice. It is, as you might expect, sort of tiny.  Left picture is the door, right is the sign above the doorbell. 

Next post is part 2: Lake Garda, Mount Baldo