Friday 28 June

Early start to meet up at Tronchetto vaporetto stop for our 8am tour (we passed an Asian photo shoot on the way to the Rialto stop, as you do) – we had good emailed instructions and got there in plenty of time to have a bite to eat since we’d missed the hotel breakfast.   We’ve learned a bit more about the vaporetto timetables, we’d also got a multi-day pass to use over five days and both yesterday and this morning we were in the very front of the boat so had a prime spot to see the activity on the grand canal.  A bit scary sometimes with a real scrum of vaporettos, water taxis, gondolas, delivery boats all skipping round each other. 

Our tour guide/driver was Marco and we were joined by American couple John and Cheryl who were very easy to get on with.   Leaving Venice Marco pointed out the cruise ships lined up, and also a shipyard with an under-construction Carnival cruise liner complete with spiral waterslide on the top.   We asked if the shipyards provided a lot of employment in the area but apparently only about 20% of the workforce is Italian, the rest is from Pakistan, India and other countries as it is much cheaper.

Our first stop was at the small town of Marostica which has two lovely churches and a famous town square where there’s a giant chessboard and every two years they re-enact a famous chess game using human players.   It goes back to the ? legend of two men who played chess, the winner to marry the local lord’s daughter – actually it came about after a play set in 1450 but written after WW2 was brought to life but hey, it’s a good story.   There’s also a 1300’s castle on the hill with walls extending down to the town through the trees, quite an impressive sight.   We were left to our own devices for half an hour so Pete and I walked to the two churches to have a look; one had a massive lock on the donation box and a pretty garden in what was the presbytery.  We’re always surprised by the high end shops in these little towns too, I guess it shows the high volume of tourists visiting.

We drove a few minutes further to Bassano del Grappa, home of a famous bridge and (as the name suggests) numerous grappa producers.  The bridge was designed in 1569 by Andrea Palladio and when we visited was in the process of the latest of many makeovers, this one because its sinking so needed to be propped up and strengthened, so we walked through a bit of a building site but had a great view of it from the museum courtyard.    And in that courtyard we found an enormous stainless steel rhinoceros which is a modern-day tribute to the artist Albrecht Durer whose work was being showcased in the museum/art gallery.   Durer was famous for his accurate drawings of plants and animals in the 15^th and 16^th century but he never saw a rhino, instead he drew this one from a detailed description of one seen in a zoo by a friend and it wasn’t quite right, but pretty good for all that. 

It’s a nice place to walk around, lots of historical buildings, and we popped into a grappa distillery located in a 500-year-old building where the internal steps were worn down in the middle from all those years of use.  Grappa is made by distilling grape skins, pulp, seeds and skins left over from winemaking so we could see the process as well as the history of grappa in their museum, and then it was on to the tasting room.    We’d been through a room with a dozen or more air ‘tanks’ which had a push-button that released the smell of that particular flavour – everything from cardamom to raspberries.   For the tastings we had coffee, blackcurrant, lemon and plain.   I only liked the lemon but the others drank theirs up happily.  

We had a look around the old town and then it was back upriver of the bridge where we could see the old city walls (1000 years old) and then I saw my ideal home:  close enough to Venice, historical and it had a maid because we could see someone cleaning the windows in the turret (which was good enough for me) – and when we looked at the other side of the house it had the initials ‘PG’ on it so it had to be for me and Pete.

Lunch was in the town of Asolo, a bit higher up and with a castle which Pete and I climbed the small hill to have a look at.  Not open to the public but it has excellent views of the countryside and edge of town, as well as a well looked-after small tower which Pete climbed into.  I stuck to ground level and what looked as though it might be a dungeon but was just a small room though the thickness of the door shows that it was well fortified.      We had lunch outside a nice café with a good menu (gazpacho for me, delicious) and it was obviously a popular place for gelato because so many were having huge icecream and fresh fruit sundaes, and they didn’t seem to be sharing either.   How is it that some Italian women (who eat those treats) stay slim and stylish?    Neither of us was keen to explore further in the 30+ heat so we sat with a gelato and filled in time until Marco picked us up again.

On the road again to Villa Barbato, or Villa di Maser which is another UNESCO World Heritage site due to it being designed by Andrea Palladio and the frescoes made by famous artist Paolo Veronese, as well as sculptures by various artists.  Built around 1560 for the Barbato brothers who were ambassadors to the court of Elizabeth 1 in England and the king of France, the Palladio style was to have a central wing for family living and the side wings had fancy facades to hide day-to-day storage, farm buildings etc.  It was used as the Italian army HQ in WW1, then bought by the founder of the Venice Film Festival for his daughter whose descendants live in the villa today.   Palladio also designed a deteriorating, but beautiful-looking, small church at the villa gate, and there’s also a vineyard, but we were there to see the frescoes.  Unfortunately there’s no photography allowed because it is technically a family home, a pity because the six rooms in the central part of the house are stunning.  The colours are bright, the stories are well explained, and each room is completely different.    Windows front and back look over the countryside to the front, and onto a pool with a summerhouse at the back complete with more statues.    Through a glass barrier on each of the back rooms we could see through a sitting room and down a hallway to frescoes of life-size people on the end walls; on one side was a life-size self portrait of Veronese, a very handsome man too.   This was definitely well worth a visit.

We carried on through more lovely countryside, more market gardening, a fairly big braided river that looked just like New Zealand, and into more hilly areas covered in grapevines and to our stop at a family-owned vineyard where they make prosecco.   Oh a hardship to taste three types (dry, sweet, medium), oh no, make that four generous half-glasses because they gave us the second sample twice by mistake!   There were a few zzzzzzz’s in the car on the way back.     We would very definitely recommend this tour if anyone has a day up their sleeve in Venice, not cheap but we felt we had our money’s worth.

Back to Tronchetto carpark and then a vaporetto back to the Rialto, we were ready just to sit for an hour or so before going over the other side of the Rialto bridge and having dinner at one of the cafes on the pavement.  Had a very good meal, good service and couldn’t have been better placed as we were almost under the Rialto bridge so were able to people-watch as we ate.   

And……..that was the third lovely day in Venice and tomorrow it’s on to Rovinj in Croatia where we’ll have Andy and family with us for a week.