The Jaguar Dream turns Dacia - and that is a good thing!

This blog posting is dedicated to Martha X and Raymond Y.  

Below is an e-mail posted to them recently.  A gentle read, that I hope dear reader, you might enjoy.

Liebe Martha, lieber Ray,

Greetings to you both!  

I hope life and times and health continue well for you there.  As it is here.  Thank God.

We have little news, which as we said before is not a bad thing in these Covid times.  In lieu of news I share a nice story. - No the boss of the pension down the road has not found his inner peace and is now nice to guests. Alas the establishment continues on as usual.

But we have a car story in which you are indirectly a part and which you may enjoy.  This is not an urgent read, so wait until you have you have a relaxing moment with your drink of choice to hand and enjoy.

As you may recall, when you visited, Herbert was quite taken with your Jaguar. - AND with you both of course, but that goes without saying!!!

Anyway Herbert assumed such a lovely car was not a feasible purchase for us.  But fair dues he went looking and looking and looking on the internet.  He did about five months of looking and fair dues again, he did indeed find and purchased the Jaguar of his dreams as you know.  We enjoyed trips in the Jaguar for over six years.  Great happy memories around many adventures on the road.

Full disclosure:  Personal transport wise it is normally bikes and Bugattis that excite me.  But it was I and not Herbert that got all Mrs. Bucket over Herbert´s  Jaguar; so much so that Herbert had to remind me not to be polishing the car so diligently in public places!

In the last while our life plans have evolved; I will be a retiree next year D.V.  (ho hooooo!).  We plan to do more road trips outside of school holiday time.  - Herbert being self employed can arrange his work schedule easier than me.  We wanted flexibility. ..... And we got it with a new (second hand) Dacia.

It worked almost seamlessly.   On Sunday June 28th, Herbert sold his Jaguar to a lovely gentleman called Joseph who ´collects Jaguars´, we know the car will be loved, which is a good feeling for us after so many happy years with the car.

The following Saturday July 4th Herbert bought his Dacia - also from a man called Joseph. - Nice touch I thought the Joseph factor.

FYI:  I think St. Joseph, like St. Christopher are totally underrated saints - if you ´do´ saints that is.  And worse for the latter who had to put up with a demotion to ´blessed´from the Vatican some years ago.  But I digress. ...

Away, the Dacia is the perfect ´up grade´for us; Herbert purchased a box bed for the car, so we don´t have to stress about booking accommodation, we now have a plan B in the back of the car!

We already tried it out.  And it worked a treat:    On Friday July 10th we drove to Venice for seven days.  😎 - More on that adventure in the last blog posting.

On the way back we visited two vineyards in Valpolicella  😊.  Taking our time we drove back via Innsbruck.  Just before the Arlberg tunnel we found a suitable car park to overnight and sleep. And that we did on our box bed.  Arriving into Allensbach at 6:20 a.m. on Sunday July 20th.


For info. on the box bed Romeo H. chose to purchase: https://dielectric.de/produkt-kategorie/dacia/

All for now and full of ´Dacia happy´ from Allensbach. More photos below.

Hausfrau Róisín  

P.S. Note to self and Dacia owner.  Regardless of how mild the weather is, a warm sleeping bag is always advisable!

Dacia in the shade in Vineyard Mount d´Ora Valpolicella.

Dacia in Vineyard La Dame in Valpolicella


A reader asked for photos of the Jaguar.

See below Romeo H coming home in September 2013 with his brand new third hand Jaguar.

Is that the look of one happy camper im Leben.

And ´the happy´ was deserved: Romeo H. put in a look of work and effort to find the Jaguar of his dreams.....

One happy man with his new car!




Celebrating the Jaguar purchase.....












And the Jaguar was bought after the Mercedes was sold.

But that is another whole story!

It started with the Sunday Telegraph - and ended up in Venice!

Holy God, July is come and gone and not a word of a blog sorted. Where does the time go!

And once again I say ´Hut ab´to excellent journalists who get out good quality print over night - Heck I even give a baby ´Hut ab´ to journalists who get out bad print overnight. I can get nothing out in a month, never mind over night.

Anyway the July blog on Venice is ´on the way´ to being sorted!

As I said, it all started with the Sunday Telegraph.

Now being an Irish person the ´facts´as presented by the Sunday Telegraph may be a ´bit alternative´ to facts as perceived by moi and perhaps a proportion of my fellow country persons. But where the opinions on ´the facts´between myself and aformentioned newspaper would be 100% unnamimous would be the facts as discussed in the Sunday Telegraph´s Travel Section.

The Sunday Times Travel Section is excellent! They have very reliable information on budget holidays, luxuary holidays, you name it holidays. Whatever you want to do holidays, where ever you want to go holidays.  As long as it is legal, you can find information on it, and very good information too, in the Sunday Telegraph Travel Section.

And this has consistantly been the case for the last fifty odd years at least; that was when I was reading the travel section and dreaming about winter holidays in San Moritz! On top of that it is always a pleasant read; you really feel like you want to go to whereever they are writing about - even if you never wanted to go there before!

And so it was that I came to the idea in late June of a trip to Venice. In the middle of June this year, I somehow came accross a piece from the Sunday Telegraph Travel Section on good value accomadation in Venice , written in 2015. Great stuff. And as usual a grand read.

`But Venice in July` you whail `Venice -full of tourists and cruise ships, hot, sweaty, crowded, smelly, beautiful Donna Leon Venice` you say again more than somewhat agast.

But no gentle reader, not now, not in these times of Covid. Now, I figured, there would be no tourists, no cruise ships, no crowds, no smells; no nothing only us and sad Gondoliers ´gondoling´ about in empty Gondolas! And that is exactly how it was, including alas the sad Gondoliers

So here is how things went:

Once I saw that we were going in the direction whereby we in Germany were going to be allowed to travel (with precautions) to Italy - I started plotting: We were going to drive to Venice!

First I went back to the article and read through all the choices. Decided on one.

Second: I presented the idea of Venice to Romeo H. along with information on above mentioned accomadation. Romeo H did not take much persuading God bless him; he saw the logic of it all.

But, being a pragmatic sort of human himself, he asked `And what about parking? We are not going to Venice if we have to pay a fortune to park the car?´ He had a point; a brief perusal of parking options in Venice showed the charges were around the €60 for 24 hours mark.

This apparent set back was only momentarily; I figured we would not be the only budget minded people in Europe who ever thought of driving to Venice. Surely the tourist office in Venice has some suggestions. And they did. On their website. For €5.00 for 24 hours and a pleasant ferry ride away from Venice proper. More later.

So off we set on Friday morning July 10th at 10:15 a.m. - only days after travel from Germany to Italy was permitted. There were a few dead donkeys we could have encountered, but did n´t. Not a one, thank God. So on we went, and a beautiful drive it was too. For five full hours nothing but tra la tra la. Picnic and sunshine and tra la tra la. And then more tra la tra la. No traffic indeed nary a car to be seen on the road. Yep tra la tra la all the way.

The tra la tra abruptly stopped at 15: 52 when we were just over the Swiss/Italien border and 20 miles north of Milan. It was a hot day, and traffic suddenly slowed down to ´crawl mode`. And it stayed there – for two long hours. We eventually started moving again at 17: 50.

Note to self and the world: Avoid being on the road within 100 miles of Milan any time of the night or day, but especially on Friday afternoon of the first weekend where people are allowed to move about after the easing of restrictions after a pandemic. Let us not say any more, other than to confirm we, and the marriage survived.

We had planned to sleep over about 12 miles before Padua. But after moving again and with the cool of the evening, and a nice pause with a strong cup of coffee somewhere after Verona, Romeo H, God bless him, decided he was ready to drive all the way to Venice. Ö.

And so we arrived at Punta Sabioni at about 9.30 pm, some 11 hours 15 minutes and 679 km  after we left Allensbach.  More on that later.... much more!

 Suffice to say for now, that once we arrived at the somewhat quaint but apparently very safe car park, we were in super holiday mode again.  

We could enjoy the view of Venice as we waited for the Vapporito to bring us to the Island of Venice. The journey over to Venice was a breezy delight, even at 10.30 p.m.  Arriving at the stop  San Zaccaria Pietà, 30100 Venezia VE, Italy some 40 relaxing minutes later.  

We were in Venice!    

And lads I tell you what!  First impressions: Every thing fabulous you imagined about Venice - it was: 

Small streets, and then very small streets, lots of quaint little bridges, beautiful old buildings.  In spite of dark alleys and apparent dead ends that were not, one felt quite safe. In the whole time I was in Venice, day or night I always felt safe.  There were Donnna Leon type views around every corner. - In fact I am quite sure the little art shop on the corner of the Fondamenta on which we stayed, was part of a Donna Leon programme.  I cannot be sure, but if you, dear reader care to check out this link, you may find prof of my hypothesis. https://www.theveniceinsider.com/donna-leon-brunetti-venice

Anyway after a very relaxed stroll through small alleys and plazas, I am proud to say we found our way ´reasonably well´ to our accommodation  B&B San Marco -  on Fondamenta S. Giorgio dei Schiavoni, 3385.  Our host Alice  graciously agreed to wait up for our 11.30 p.m. arrival. 

Our apartment was just as I had hoped: quaint, quite and cool.  Bedroom windows the size of doors lending a light and airy feel to the generously proportioned apartment. The sixty steps up the four flights in the cool hallway did not bother.  There was only one issue: Romeo H. felt however the ´shower stall needed getting used to`.  I could live with it no bother. We were more than happy with our accommodation.  An added bonus, and a very nice bonus too: Alice the host lived one floor up and was often to hand for tips and suggestions for our daily outings. 

And so dear readers - all three of you, I take a pause now; I enjoy writing my ´Venice Diary´, but in no rush to finish it.  I bring myself right back there when I write.   And that is not a bad place to be!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last leg of the journey after getting off the A47 and driving onto the SS14 in the direction of Punta Sabioni was not fun.

And so we got to Punta Sabioni at about 9:30 p.m. 

 

 

More on the last leg of the drive to Punta Sabioni later.

Well to be honest, the 

1)  Parking at Marco Polo Airport, with free schuttle  from carpark to Marco Polo Airport.  Every few minutes. Journey three minutes.
https://www.parcheggiomarcopolo.com/en/book-now/

 Cost: €30.00 for six days. Yes, that is correct: 30 Euros. Six days. Covered carpark.

2) Bus seven minutes walk from Venice Marco Polo Airport takes you from the airport to 

to Piazzale Roma, 30100 Venezi

Cost €8.00 per person.  Time: About 28 Minutes. Frequency: Every 20 Minutes.