Venice

Caro: After unloading the car we wove our way through the streets and managed to find our accommodation. We had the surprise realisation that we’d booked an apartment rather than a hotel room (a good deal on Laterooms). We were in a great location, very close to Ca’D'Oro vaporetto stop.  We were able to come and go easily, and had a second bedroom and a kitchen.

Unfortunately it started raining on Saturday evening, and it didn’t let up until Monday. In Venice, this means floods. The Venice council has a program of installing raised walkways during the autumn and winter months through some high traffic parts of town. But that leaves a lot of waterlogged streets to be navigated. We were lucky to be travelling with walking boots but most of the tourists had only city shoes which weren’t holding up to the 2-3 inches of water they needed to wade through at times. Some resorted to covering their shoes with plastic bags, some took their shoes off and walked barefoot. Others did as the locals do, and invested in gumboots.

We had intended to have a gondola ride – but given the weather, we elected not to. Instead we did a lot of walking and a lot of eating – mostly excellent with an odd disappointing dish, here and there.

On Monday we caught the water bus out to Murano. It was a worthwhile trip. A lot of the glassware is tat but there are some beautiful pieces too. I treated myself to a gorgeous glass necklace.

Several of the restaurants we ate at were sourced from Guardian recommendations, which were pretty reliable. But by far my favourite meal of the three days was a Trattoria less than ten metres from our front door – down a small side street. We noticed it on the first day, but it was closing. We tried again on the second day but couldn’t get a table. We finally succeeded with a reservation on the Monday night and we were rewarded by a great atmosphere and really good, simple, well-priced food.

Eat there yourselves:

Osteria Ca’D'Oro (also known as Trattoria Alla Verde)
On Calle del Pistor, Cannaregio

We also recommend:

Osteria Mocenigo - really lovely menu of Venetian dishes and seafood. This restaurant makes no effort to attract the tourist market – a simple brick frontage, no signage on the outside when it’s closed, the menu is only in Italian etc. The people sitting beside us were locals who eat there often and recommended some dishes to us. Definitely recommend this place.

Ristorante Alla Madonna - this place is close to the Rialto and appears to be a bit of a Venice tourist institution. The attraction here is less about the food and more about the service – all the waiters are older chaps in white tie. Some are warm and welcoming, others are more aloof – but over the hour or two we spent there, they managed to entertain and charm us. This is the place we had some of our hit and miss dishes. I’d advice steering towards the fresh seafood rather than meat here. Our desserts (almond pie and wild strawberries with icecream) were hits.

Osteria Al Ponte “La Patatina” – we jumped on the boat and headed into Santa Croce area and wandered, looking for lunchtime inspiration. We ended up here which we later realised was one of the Guardian recommendations (Tim claims he took us there on purpose – I don’t believe him!). Here we chose meat and pasta just ’cause we felt like it – but all the locals around us ate beautiful looking fish. It was interesting to see a group of about 12 locals who had split into two – the wives all on one table and the blokes on another. We saw the wives eating a fantastic dish we had to order for ourselves. It was Biscotti alla Crema – basically biscuits doused with a vanilla custard, literally just finger food, and a spoon at the end to scrape up the remaining skerrick of custard.  It was pretty special.

Italy – the Northern Lakes

Tim: Flew from Marrakech to Milan and by 2pm we had our hire car and were on the road.

Malpensa airport is very close to Lake Maggiore, so we were able to wing our way up to the lake. After a dissappointing lunch in Arona we drove to Stresa where we thought we’d stay the night.  With nothing pre-booked we were grateful to see the tourist information office on the waterfront, and managed to hook ourselves with a very average hotel in the centre of town AND convince a parking inspector not to put a ticket on our car.

It was nice to be somewhere different, with no one trying to sell sell sell to you.  We even found a laundromat and washed most of our clothes – it’s amazingly therapeutic to be able to get everything cleaned afresh when you’re travelling!

Next task was finding somewhere for an evening meal.  After doing a reccy of the entire centre of town we chanced upon  Il Violetta.  After a quick beer, wine and game of 500 in the Black Cat Bar (Il Bar Gato Nero) we went for the meal.  It was excellent – Beef carpaccio, Fois Gras and Scallop Risotto, locally caught Perch, Apricot Tart, excellent house wine, grappa, coffee…Italy is such a fantastic place for food!

We cracked on early the next day, and went for a scenic drive up the nearest mountain, which ended up being a very quaint (and active) Italian ski resort, Mottarone.  Then from the west to east side of the lake via the north, we just drove.  Into Switzerland, and back out again (TIP: buy your petrol on the swiss side, 30% cheaper!).  The day was warm and the sun was shining so we sat down to our lunch of mortadella, cheese, salami, tomato and bread in Maccagno, on the banks of Maggiore.  Absolutely stunning – and whilst we were eating lunch we watched two fire helicopters returning again and again to suck / scoop up water from the lake to douse on a mountain fire.

Our destination for the evening was Como, on Lake Como, at the southernmost point.  We were initially disappointed I think by the size of the town.  Certainly compared to Stresa it was quite brash, and excellent food was hard to find at a decent price. On Como, I’d recommend staying in some of the smaller towns.

Friday we had two things to do.  One was to visit Bellagio, as it had been recommended. The other was to hot foot it up to Davos (about a three hour drive) to see Brendan Watson for the night.

Bellagio is a stunning little town on Lake Como.  Imagine Como is shaped like an inverted Y, Bellagio is on the meeting point of the three parts.

The drive to Davos was pretty smooth apart from finding our way onto the Autostrade at Como, which I firmly blame of the f’íng shite Italian signposts there! We also found ourselves having to pay an annual licence to use Swiss highways. 30 euros, which seemed quite steep for less than 24 hours in the country (though great value for the locals).

One thing I will say, if you’re driving up mountains, have something bigger than a 1.2 Fiat Panda, it’s a lot more fun!

Great to catch up with Bren, and meeting Adrian (another Aussie who spent a few of his teenage years in Wagga) and Anya, over wine and great cheese and then home made schnitzel. Bren’s flat is large, comfortable and has a guest room – useful, since living in a ski resort seems to guarantee a steady flow of visitors.

We didn’t get to bed till after 2am so our early start the next day was tough (not made easier by the stomach upset I’d developed…don’t ask!).  Off at 7am as we had to be in Venice by 1pm as that was when we were due to drop the hire car off.  The drive took pretty much 6hrs, with an excellent bacon and eggs (Caro not me…see stomach issue!) at the Marche service centre at Bellinzona (the UK roadside catering industry could learn an awful lot from the quality of food there!).

Arrived at Venice at 1pm, only to find that the car hire company shut at 12:30pm.  Slung the car in the public car park, left the keys in the car (as instructed) and cross our fingers that the car hire company wouldn’t charge us for the parking they threaten to do on the notice on their door!