1 st of September

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What a place to have breakfast!

I don't normally eat it and Italy is not exactly the greatest place on earth for morning meals. Cappuccino and croissant standing at the local bar is normally your best option. But this hotel faces the Giudecca and has a sort of stage made of wooden planks, that reaches out on the canal. The morning is fresh from overnight rainfall and the white plastic furniture is still wet.
Big white boats floating upstream. White nuns crossing a bridge.
I wanted to catch the early sunlight at the ARSENALE for my little video intervention.
Walking back from the there accompanied by the smell of JAVEL water and the gutters to the Accademia. You can have a gondola ride for Lira 700 across to the northern side of le Zattere.

My walk starts from Fusina for which you have to take aboat across the western bay.
Main landmark here is a huge ENEL gas utility and the main camping site for Venice
The guy who steers the boat looks a bit puzzled by the fact that I'm filming the approach to the landing at Fusina and feel obliged to explain to him that I'm starting a walk to Rome from here.
He's very polite and does not forward me with his thoughts but my interpretation of his silence and the absence of any sort of muscle movement in his face is that this is not the sort of activity he thinks worthwhile of a decent human being...

What was supposed to be a walk along the Brenta river turns out to be a walk along a dusty road with the gas plant hissing on one side and scrap metal heaps that claim to be boatyards on the other, at least for the next couple of miles and I'm glad there is a Bar at the end of this first stretch.
That beer was very welcome and went down rather well!
The rest of the route along the Brenta that day is not much more inspiring. One can hardly walk along the Brenta river, which is incredible for a Canal.
The first Villa on the Canal is actually just closing down for visits and there is a row between a couple of potential Italian visitors and the ticket office manager, that managed to get some used tickets of a few German tourists leaving the place.
This one explains that the place shuts at 12 (on a Saturday?.) to reopen only next day. She also argues that the tickets presented to her are not valid because they've got holes in them.. The Italian punters get excited, explaining to the lady (turning around to me for approval), that they are from the area and that this is all too much, that none of the places are available for visits etc...
My question if one can actually walk along the river by the property gets lost in the heat of the argument but I decide that the most likely outcome must be NO.

I now manage to lose my way, because long stretches are built over but eventually end up in Mira which is the first stop.
After some food in the local Pizzeria and having found a suitable room to sleep, I decide to have a look at the 18th century villas that you might have had a look at the Brenta river Website which I have put a link to on my Walking Schedule pages: I would now like to encourage you to have a look at the pictures I took on the spot.

BRENTA VILLAS (not the postcards.......)

If you think that reality looks somewhat different you are right. (Will update photos on trhis one asap?..)
One of them looks like an abandoned building site. The next one has all it?s windows boarded up and a little notice on the door states that even the local (alternative?) Moby Dick theatre group has ceased to use the building about a year ago. Since it doesn?t say that they have been censored, it must have been for safety reasons!
The next crumbling heap of walls has all it?s windows bricked up.
God thanks, that turning round the bend of the Canal, there?s a huge factory that looks like one of those monstrous sites they show you on TV to illustrate how polluted the Russian industrial sites are. At least that has got a bit of interest to it.
The little town centre gets quite busy in the evening with bars full of people playing cards and generally hanging & cycling about. Everything packs up at about quarter past ten and so do I.