All the way to Venice...

I was looking through my notes the other night and noticed that a few weeks ago I estimated arriving in Venice around June 25. And here I am, almost a week early: I arrived in a town just outside Venice yesterday afternoon (June 19).

Since the only road to Venice is a major highway, I opted to stay at a campground (which is cheap) here and take the bus into Venice yesterday and today to explore.

In short, Venice is amazing. It's quite a sight to see buildings built right to the edge of the water, and the maze of streets is fun to navigate, as long as you don't have a specific destination in mind or a tight schedule to follow.

In the last week I've taken a pretty direct route across the north of Italy. On the bright side, I've had relatively easy (flat) cycling and gotten to spend some time in beautiful cities. The down side of this is that the area is full of busy roads which are pretty stressful for cycling. There are country roads, some of them fairly quiet, but they tend to be poorly signed and can result in lots of wrong turns and extra miles.

I've compromised by sometimes cycling on pretty busy roads (even smaller freeways, at times), and then navigating the smaller roads when I get tired of that. Yesterday I had some beautiful cycling through a regional park south of Padua.

I've found that even the smaller towns I've passed through have had some amazing cathedrals. For example, the other night I spent the night in Lonigo, and found their cathedral pretty amazing. (It was constructed to give thanks for the end of a cholera epidemic at the end of the 19th century). But the town was small enough that the man at the local bar/cafe spent plenty of time helping me figure out what to have for dessert!

One of my favorite things about my trip across the north of Italy has been stopping for coffee in bar-cafes along the way in smaller towns. Most people, even who don't speak a word of English, have been asking me about my trip (since it's obvious that I'm travelling by bike). Now that I've travelled over 2000 miles, it's fun to tell them where I've been!

Time to catch the bus into Venice. Arrivederci!