Lido > Udine 115km

[Originally posted Aug 13, 2014]

Whoa.  Great day.

Left Venice (which was sad).  But it is always nice to see new places.

Main goals for today were two fold: cover a good amount of ground and avoid the forecasted "torrential rain".  Mission accomplished.

We got just outside of Cordovado when the rain started coming.  So we quickly brainstormed shelter options.  Assuming the rain would stick around for a couple hours (the weather channel had predicted torrential rain) we decided that a shelter that could also be a campsite would be ideal.  Where can you always get away from rain?  Under bridges.  Google Maps said a decent sized river was ahead so we raced off (we go into what I like to call "time-trial" mode when we have to be somewhere quick and being soaking wet hangs in the balance).  We made it.  Great spot.  Then the rain came.  And the wind.  If you are 40 feet below a bridge and the wind comes on strong with the rain then the rain can basically be blown to soak the ground completely under the bridge.  This was our situation.  It quickly became apparent that our "spot" wasn't so great.  Then we noticed the gigantic piles of trees that were stuck against one side of the bridge supports - likely from a previous flash flood - another bad sign as we were camping in the river bed.  Then the police showed up and suggested we leave.

The rain left and the sun came out (my favorite).  And so we continued on to Udine, Italy for our last night in Italy.  Udine is awesome.  When you go to a place like Venice or Paris you expect it to be fabulous.  But when you go to Udine and expect nothing, and then it is awesome, it makes the awesome that much better.

Great dinner of spaghetti and pizza followed up by gelato for last evening in Italy.  It has been great.  Tomorrow we will hit the Julian Alps of Slovenia.  I wonder how quickly I will pick up Slovene (shouldn't be too hard, right?)

Expenses: €3.58 Lunch (watermelon, water, limone gelato), €45 Hotel (three times a charm?), €24 Dinner (last one in Italy), €6 Gelato

Pasta per favore.

Arrivederci Venezia.

Attempted Camp Site. Notice giant trees stuck to bridge support (bad sign of previous flash flooding).

Well I guess I got more sun today than I had planned on.

Also, to draw your attention to other parts of this website.  We have just updated our "Places We Sleep" tab.  Feel free to check it out.

Also, we are doing a trial run of Vicarious Living.  Hope it will work out.  Let me know what you think?