Leaning towards a visit to Pisa

After yesterday's "concerning" drive through the potentially snow impacted roads, the driver was more involved than he usually is in choosing the route we would be taking to get to Pisa today.  Having made our decision we were on our way, but it was clear that the concerns of yesterday had not been left behind. Once he had stated his feelings and cleared his mind about how he felt about my trip planning he felt better.  I now felt bruised and battered by what I thought was an unfair judgement and the atmosphere inside the little Panda was quite cool.  When we reached Asola (how appropriate I thought because it was not unlike the name I had been using to refer to him in my thoughts) we stopped for coffee, spoke our minds, got things off our chests and called a truce. 

On our way again, we were looking forward to a nicer day of driving through the hillside country.  And what beautiful country it is,.  No wonder people fall in love with it.

 

 There's that snow again, but at extreme zoom - nothing to be concerned about - we're not going

to be going anywhere near it today

 Far away snow capped mountains - that's the place to stay

  

 While standing at the side of a road to take a picture, as I turned away, I caught the glint of something below me in the bushes - it was an old large wine casket - about 5 gallons - in a wooden basket

 This is a band of painted decoration under the eaves on a house

Way far away across a valley, I could see a band of something, when I zoomed in on it

 I saw that it is a string of houses along a ridge

As we were travelling along we knew were were doing a lot of climbing, but it wasn't until we came upon this sign we realized just how much!  But we still hadn't hit any snow.  can you imagine the "concern" my driver had when he saw we were in the Apennine Mountains.  We had reached a height of 1308 meters yesterday - how high were we going to have to go today to get out of here.  Our way out was San Romano in Garfagnana which is at the bottom of the map directly below the "You are here" triangle.

 

My driver would have liked to turn around and go back the way we came but it was just as far to go back as to go forward, so we continued forward.   I forgot to mention that we got to this sign because we had taken a wrong turn and were actually heading the wrong way anyways.  We backtracked 14kms and were on the right track again.

 In the meantime, this was the view of the Apennines that we enjoyed.

 Down thru the valleys we roamed and up the other side working our way around

and thru this mountain range.

This was an interesting cloud to watch - the long sausage shape portion in the middle

was rolling over and over as it was building

 We did not get away with not going through any areas of snow though.  This is the highest point we were today at 1524 meters.  I was about 5 o'clock in the evening, there was melt water on the road

 and the driver was once again "concerned" about freezing ice on the roadways and the

complications it could bring.

We made it through and arrived in Pisa about 9:30 at night, safe, sound, and tired.

On the road, no particular place to go but up

It was now time to leave the Venice area and head west and south towards Florence and Pisa.  To be able to see a bit more of the countryside, we headed north and west. The first  route I chose would take us from Treviso to Trento and down to Breschia.  We would get a glimpse of the Dolomite mountains  and see some foothills along the way.  My driver though, on seeing the route, requested a route further south as he was “concerned”  about snow and ice on the road.  Route modified, approval received  and we were headed towards Castlofranco, Roverto, Lake Garda and Breshia.  Little did we know that this route was still going to send us into terrain that my driver was still “concerned” about.  This  “concern”  grew more intense as we started seeing snow capped mountains in the distance.  Imagine his reaction when he saw patches of snow, among the trees on the shaded side of the road!!!!  The weather, by the way, was clear, sunny, and warm with not a storm cloud to be seen.  The passenger meanwhile was blissfully enjoying the scenery and not sharing the driver's concern.   

Here is what the passenger saw (I am not sure what the driver was seeing).

 Appears to be a new house inside this old castle structure

 Getting high enough that the trees are just starting to leaf out now

This is the snow that started increasing the "concern" of the driver

                                                  Dolomite mountains seen in the distance

                                                                  Zoomed in by camera

how close they appeared to the "concerned" driver

 Trees here hadn't even started to leaf at all - note how root balls are exposed

 A very craggy peak at maximum zoom

Hill top towns

                                              A single home on a hilltop in the forest

                                                                          pretty valley view

 Another castle on a knob, as Bill calls them

 Poppies like this grow wild all over the county side

 Interesting looking rock face

Finally we had reached Lake Garda, the largest freshwater lake in Italy.  It is 30 miles at it's widest X 50 miles long.  We would now be driving by the lakeside down it's full length.  This was our first view of the lake.

 Another town on a hillside, but.............. 

 .................what made them want to build there...............

that's it in the center of the picture below, above the flower boxes

 The whole length of Lake Garda is nothing but resorts and camping areas - it must get extremely busy during the summer, and there seemed to be lots of people there even now.  It is an ideal place though.  There is of course swimming and boating to be done, but also there is sail boarding, kite boarding, rock climbing, adventure parks, amusement parks, trail walking and probably lots of other activities that we did not see.

We finally arrived in Breschia, our stop for the night, tensions high between the driver and navigator.  Our  room for the night was in the Euro Hotel.  This was the TV in the room.  It was mounted high on the wall, I couldn't reach it with my arm outstretched, and it had only about a 12" screen.  As there was only Italian language TV available, it was not a great concern - music what ever language doesn't have to rely on a screen.



Glass and Lace

Next day was more promising and we returned to Venice and to see the glass making centers on Murano Island and the lace making centers on Burano Island.  Our first stop was Murano.  It was interesting getting there.  It is clear that Venice lagoon is fairly shallow, because everywhere you could see seaweed beds and when the tide was low you could see lots of areas where the waves were breaking just over the bottom.  The traffic lanes for boat travel are all marked by pylons with lights atop them.  There was one lane for each direction just like on a regular road.

We didn’t get very far on Murano, as after we past a few shops we saw one that had some really beautiful things that we wanted to look at.  Once we got in there a salesman took us up to their show rooms where some very wonderful pieces were found.  As in all Italian buildings it was like entering a tardus.  Turn a corner, and a whole new vista opens up to you.  There were some magnificent pieces there and equally magnificent price tags to match.  Here are some pictures of what we saw.

"Roadway" heading to Murano - note the big white fluffy clouds and brilliant blue sky

 - it didn't stay that way!!

 Massive chandelier - over 2000 pieces needed to create it

 Pelican family

 Perot and Pierette - classic Venetian characters

Glass birds of all colours 

Church on Murano Island 

Glass furnaces of Murano Island

Next we were going to watch some glass being produced, but the person who had been showing us around suggested that we head to Burano Island to see it while the sun was still shinning as rain was expected.  They had a customer there who they were providing with a free taxi ride to Burano, so we were able to travel with them.  When we got to Burano we were taken on a “tour” of a lace “factory”.  In fact what we saw was one woman, making Burano lace, and the rest of the tour was of the different types of lace available, that was hand made.  Burano lace is all hand made with 100 weight thread and needle.  100 weight is very thin thread for those who are not familiar with thread weight.  A 30 weight thread is what we would generally use for most of our casual stitching needs  at home.  According to our tour guide there are only 8 women making Burano lace today.

Here are some pictures from Burano.  The island was just magical.  The sun was shining, the houses are all coloured brightly, the streets are wide, there is no motor traffic, and small canals interconnect across the island.

This all came to an end about 2:30, when the skies opened up and the rain poured down steadily.  We headed back to Venice and to our hotel to dry out and warm up.

Here is St Michael's Island, the cemetery island

Two structures who have lost their battle with the sea

 Do you think they are expecting high water here