A three week tour of Italy
By: The Bankses
Tags: Kids, Italy, Motorhome, Travel, Vegan

It’s been six weeks since we last posted. Whoops. Truth is, opportunities to sit down and put fingers to keyboard in a meaningful way have been few and far between (as have decent WiFi networks). Clearly, we’ve been keeping ourselves extremely busy. So instead of writing to put all of our Italian adventures into one post, I thought I’d just post the first half for now, while I have the chance. More soon. Promise. R.

Fun fact: there’s a 2km-wide Italian enclave at the southermost tip of Switzerland named Campione d’Italia. The surrounding area of lake Lugano was handed back to Switzerland in the 1500s, but the Italians kept a little spot on the east bank of the lake. I discovered this whilst frantically Google-mapping our route out of Switzerland, towards Lake Como.

Getting out of Switzerland was trickier than it sounds; the roads in Italy are unpredictable and treacherous at the best of times, but nearer the border they seemed to have given up on maintenance entirely. We skirted around Lugano at 20km/h before zig-zagging south to a campsite in the foothills of Monte Generoso.

We never made it to Como in the end. After a lot of searching, we couldn’t seem to find an affordable family-friendly site to stay. We concluded that Como was too rich for our money and carried on to Garda.

Lake Garda

Lizzie and I first visited Garda in 2010.Back then we stayed in Arco at the smarter, sporty northern end of the lake. This time around, happily carrying two daughters in tow, we headed for the southern tip where there’s a bit more space for campsites and more family-friendly things to do.

The first pebble beach of Le Big Trip.

We cycled the lakeside path to the old fortifications of Peschiera del Garda, stopping on the way for the first barefoot paddle of our trip.

It was mid-May and starting to get warmer, so we had the perfect excuse to buy gelato. It was the first of many. We discovered that most gelataria have a least a couple of vegan-friendly flavours made simply from fresh fruit, water and sugar. The more progressive establishments have begun to offer more creative vegan options involving dark chocolate, fruits and nuts.

And so our gelato addiction began. Normally, we’d get fed up of walking about in the heat around 3 or 4pm and declare to the girls that it was ‘gelato-o’clock’ — an opportunity for us to sit, plan the route back to Rosie, and give the kids a little sugary energy boost that would see them through ‘til dinner.

The fortifications of Peschiera del Garda.

Venice

After Garda, we were intending to head directly to Venice, but the weather forecast was looking absolutely dreadful. Instead, we found a cosy little bolthole on Airbnb and shut ourselves away from the winds and rain for a few nights. If you ever find yourself exiled in the Shakespearean territory between Mantua and Padua, I highly recommend Claudio’s place in Cura. We arrived on Eurovision night and let the girls stay up late to watch the whole contest. They made flags for each country we’d visited so far and fell asleep in the boring scoring bit.

Homemade flags at our Airbnb

After the weather had calmed and we’d recharged our batteries, we drove to Venice. Definitely one of the bucket list destinations we’d been most excited about visiting. We settled into a campsite in Mestre on the mainland that was only a 10 minute bus ride into Venice. It had a heated indoor pool, a fab playground and amazing showers and toilets. It also seemed to boast half of the Cottonwood Poplar trees in Europe, judging by the constant fluff in the air. It got *everywhere*. It was like walking through a snowstorm in early summer.

The Poplar fluff (Cottonwood) at our Venice campsite.

We made the right decision in waiting for the weather to improve before heading to Venice — the two days we spent exploring the city were glorious. We got lost repeatedly, hopped on and off the vaporetti, counted the lion murals, visited Saint Mark’s Basilica, took a trip to the glass-blowing island of Murano, hunted down vegan pizza and (more) gelato, stumbled on the world’s most beautifully disorganised bookshop, and generally fell in love with the city.

Libreria Acqua Alta.

We spent two full days roaming the narrow streets of Venice and didn’t get bored. Liz and I could have done several more, just meandering around, but with kids, two is just enough. We found the only playground in the city, and then said goodbye.

Gondoliers.

Before leaving Venetia completely, we spent a couple of nights at the beach resort of Lido de Jesolo. It reminded me of my childhood holidays on the south coast of the UK, only with a lot more mosquito bites. It did, however, provide my favourite gelato in Italy: a joyous combination of speculoos, vanilla and apple.

Team Banksy and our vegan gelato cones.

Pisa / Lucca

Once the Jesolo mozzies had bitten every inch of us, we headed south-west and drove the full width of Italy towards Pisa, stopping in the small city of Lucca in Tuscany.

Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, Lucca.

Lucca is beautiful. The old city centre is surrounded by Renaissance walls, atop which you can walk or cycle all the way around. We enjoyed searching out the bronze artworks on the walls and dotted around town, the most impressive of which is in the centre of the oval-shaped Piazza dell’Anfiteatro.

Tourist box well-and-truly ticked.

We used Lucca as a base for a quick day trip to Pisa since it’s only a short train ride away.

The kids were excited to see the Tower after learning about it in an episode of Go Jetters, so we took the obligatory photo, but couldn’t climb to the top because the girls were too young (boo!).

I was far more excited by the Camposanto Monumentale, in any case. It’s a cemetery with ancient graves of important folk, sarcophagi, and beautiful frescoes.

Eden enjoyed learning about Roman numerals and calculating the years depicted on the decaying gravestones to find the oldest. The nerd in me loved seeing the actual hanging incense lamp that inspired Galileo’s discovery of the law of the pendulum.

Next: a deluge in Fiesole, pizza with friends in Perugia, a week in Rome, sweltering in old Pompeii, and finally a ferry from Bari.