A Scenic Tour of Italy - Venice to La Spezia

The driving directions from Venice to La Spezia are pretty simple – jump on the motorway, drive to Ferarra, on to Bologne, through to Lucca, and then up to La Spezia. About 350km, which should take about 4 hours. However, to break the monotony of the motorways, see a bit more of the countryside, and save about 20 euros in motorway tolls, we decided to take a scenic route which I found in our European road atlas. It looked a bit more direct than the motorways, and promised some beautiful views of northern Italy.

What I didn’t count on was:

• The road atlas doesn’t show all the minor roads, making navigation a little more challenging
• The road atlas doesn’t show all the towns, so unless the local signs indicate a town that is on our map, choosing the right route becomes guesswork
• Small Italian villages like to have festivals on weekends, and close off the route through the centre of town, since the locals can find their way around the roadblock using unmarked roads.
• The slightly wavy line indicating a winding road on the road atlas is in reality a wonderfully windy, narrow road that motorcyclists love, but one that confines motorists to second gear and inevitably induces motion sickness in the navigator.

In spite of all the obstacles set before us, we made it all the way across Italy to the hotel on half a tank of fuel, in about 8 hours (non-stop), only to find that I’d made a mistake with the on-line booking. We were confirmed for 1/10/07, however we arrived on 1/9/07, and they were booked out. Fortunately, the friendly duty manager phoned around to find us a room somewhere in the district (many hotels are booked out due to the holiday season), and finally came up with one down the road for 80 euros – nearly twice what we had budgeted. Fortunately this setback was just for one night, and we’re now settled into the much nicer (although cat-scented) venue we’d originally hoped for – for about 50 euros per night.

Of course, as you can see from the photos, the drive was worth it! The variety of scenery, from mountains, to farmland, to marble quarries and sales yards lining the streets was all fascinating!

Our room overlooks a valley of vineyards and possibly olive trees. 5 minutes drive through the mountain gets us to some picturesque beach-side villages, with sandy beaches and clean water to swim in.