Offtopic: A Trip With Unknown Destination.

Beside the IT, I like to travel, especially when I am the commander and the driver. At least once per year we travel somewhere. Usually the route is well planned by my wife, but the COVID broke the rules and traditions.

So this summer the first plan was to take a car and travel around the Baltic States without any special destinations. Then, we decided to change direction to South West and travel to Poland or Chech Republic if they will be opened.

1st day. 1009 km. Tallinn, EE - Warsaw, PL.

The situation in the world makes a lot of disadvantages, but also give us some benefits, and when me, my wife and two our adorable daughters passed the Estonia-Latvia border, I said to all: "Look, the route to Italy is open this week, it is our opportunity to visit famous places of Italy and see them without all the crowd around. Maybe we'll never have such opportunity anymore.

Two young pasta and pizza lovers agreed without doubt, while our fear to be blocked in Italy in case of new COVID wave was strong. Nevertheless we took a risk to go to Venezia and then think about the next point of our trip. So the unplanned trip to Italy started and my dream became true.

Somewhere in Lithuania

Our first stop was in Warsaw, a bit more than 1000 km from home. We never were in Warsaw before, so we planned not to oversleep and rush further to the target, but take some time for breakfast and walk there.

I must to say before, that we were very lucky with weather. The rain followed us whole the trip, but we were one step ahead of it.

2nd day. Breakfast in Warsaw, PL and 870 km passage to Graz, AT.

So it was sunny Sunday morning. The Stare Miasto was peaceful, silent and so beautiful.

I started to think, that decision was right.

Stare Miasto. Old Part of Warsaw.

Kings Palace in Warsaw.

The Garden of The Kings Palace.

By the way, the parking in the Old Center of Warsaw is free on Sundays, so don't be afraid to park there.

Next stop was already in Austria, Graz. Another 870 km were passed for the 2nd day.  Natasha (my wife) found some beautiful panorama pictures online, so we decided to look for this place with beautiful view on the next morning. 

3rd day. Schlossberg and last part of trip to Venezia (436 km). Evening in Venezia.

We didn't find the point with the beautiful view from the web, but found a castle, named as Schlossberg, which located on the mountain in the center of Graz. You can pass there by foot or by the Schlossbergbahn: small wagons, which rise you to the mountain by rails.

 

Margo and Veronika waiting for a ride on Schlossbergbahn.

The castle itself has nothing special, it was never conquered till the Napoleon time, when the army destroyed part of it. But it opens nice view to the city with the Schlossberg clock tower.

Schlossberg Clock Tower in The Left Corner.

The most interesting part for of the castle (in my opinion) is hidden in the clock tower.

It has the elevator to the cave beneath the castle and a slide way back to Graz to the laziest ones (like me). I recommend you to chose the slide, it was fun but sometimes crazy and scary.

I should take a video my face, not the ride itself.

As far as we decided to leave the Graz, the shower started, but we didn't care already. We were full of expectations of our next stop in Venezia.

Somewhere in Austria. I like driving in the mountains.

Finally Venezia... First you see when arriving to the old part.of it by train is...

and you already can't say anything except "Wow!" and you run to the nearest bridge to look at the channels and take a pictures, selfies ...

Our happy faces.

...but we were too hungry, so we left our wish to walk every street and ride along the channels to boil in us till the morning...

4th day. Day in Venezia and arrival to Peschiera del Garda for some rest after continuous road. 

La Dolce Vita - ... to wake up in a hotel of Venezia without any rush, while your servance running around you...

Yep! We were running and collecting all stuff as we decided to stay one day in Venezia only and head to the place where we can get some rest from roads and do some fun stuff with our children also. They like to walk, but the beautiful things for grown ups, like architecture or history, still not as attractive as swimming pool for them. 

Thanks, birds are everywhere on earth... Tolentini. Venezia.

By the way... there is a good place for breakfast in the right corner of the picture. It will cost you about 3 EUR per person and they make good sandwiches with local products.

Also, the weather is very hot in the beginning of July, so take a lot of water and wear hats if you intend to walk whole the day in Venezia... just like we did.

Also, I recommend you to take a full day ticket to the boats, it is much easier to travel around Venezia this way.

I think that it will be boring if I'll write a lot about Venezia here, so I'll place photos of empty Piazza San Marco which you never seen before and some more from our day...

Piazza San Marco is Empty This Summer

View from Basilico Di San Marco

Unfortunately the Palazzo Ducale was closed...

Basilica Di Santa Maria Della Salute

Chiesa Di San Geremia View from Channel

The narrowest street Veronica ever saw...

This was the day full of emotions from boat trips and walk around old and beautiful streets, which ended at silent and beautiful place near Peschiera Del Garda, the Bertoletta Village Apartments.

One more tip: I suggest you to stay at Bertoletta Village Apartments if you travel with kids. As it located in peaceful and beautiful place with view to vineyards (I like this view), it has everything for children (pools, swings, closed territory) and also it is not so far from the zoo and amusement parks.

5th day. Long rides banned. Kid's time.

Good morning again! Someone in you whispers "Stop. Stay here for the whole vacation", when you see such view in the morning... The 5th day was the day of leisure and fun with kids.

First we went to Parco Natura Viva, one of the biggest Zoo in Italy, which also has the Safari Zone, where you can see giraffes and rhinos and others animals near your car.

Then we visited the Garda with its beautiful shore lane...

...and relaxed in the pool...

we even played chess... our way...

6th day. City I wanted to visit so much. Disappointment again. Lampredotto.

This was the day of the city I wanted to visit from my schooltime. From the time, when we learned about Machiavelli, Medici, Republic of Firenze... The 6th day led us to Firenze and of course we couldn't pass by the Cattedrale Di Santa Maria Del Fiore.

It is so huge... When I stay near such buildings with such history, I feel myself a small boy.

I wanted to walk around and visit it... But it was closed for visiting, so this was the biggest disappointed for me and we headed to the Piazza De la Signoria where the Replica of David located.

Panoramic View of Piazza De La Signoria

Fontana Del Nettuno

Replica of David

Loggia Dei Lanzi

And what about a Lampredotto? Well... This is the common dish in Firenze, like Hot Dog on Circle K in Estonia. Usually it is a sandwich with boiled abomasum, so I thought that I'll never eat it... but despite the nature of the meal, it is very tasty. So I recommend to everyone to try it.

Also, suggest you to visit the 2nd floor of the local market, as there you'll get usual local food from fresh products with normal prices.

7th day. Road to Roma.

On the 7th day we decided to refuse from usage of toll roads. They are fast but you don't see the nature of Italy, so we left the speedy roads and started the trip to Rome with stops on the beach and hot springs. While there is nothing special to say about beach, the bathing in thermal waters was so fun that our princesses wanted to stay there till the end of vacations.

Cascate del Mulino is a waterfall with "baths" made by nature, the water temperature is about 37.5 C and the yield is 800 liters per second. Actually it is like natural SPA...

8th and 9th days. Roma & Vaticano.

Even during COVID, this city full of tourists, even local ones...
As all cities with ancient history, the Rome can't be delivered by words or by photos. You can't feel it through the words or pictures. You just must visit it. Nothing can be compared with supremacy of ancient architecture and look and feel of ancient city surrounding you, even if it is ruined.

But still I'll try to share some views of Rome with you.

Campidoglio

Via Sacra

Colosseo

Something was wrong with my

 mood, so all pictures, which I took there, I made in B&W... I don't know how to explain this. Maybe I wanted to express how old the city is... I don't know...

On the 2nd day of stay in Roma, we visited Vaticano. I thought that Citta Del Vaticano has it's own borders and you must pass some kind of control and I'll have a stamp in my pass that I visited Vaticano, but no... It is open, not whole, but you pass without any control to the Piazza San Pietro and Basilica di San Pietro, and you can't pass to Giardini Vaticani only.

Piazza San Pietro, View from Basilica

Basilica di San Pietro

I was very interested in the Dome of Basilica and wanted to see it from the inside. I thought that maybe I'll see something about how it was build, the construction. But indeed I got a good upstairs run with different types of steps. The dome has 551 steps... 

... and beautiful view as reward.

On the road from Vaticano, little princesses asked to visit Cascate Del Mulino again and after that we headed to Pisa

10th day. Pisa. What's next?

Cattedrale di Pisa

Indeed, the Pisa was considered as overnight stay and after breakfast and visit of Piazza del Duomo...

we all had the same question:

The next stop should be Milano with visit of Museo Alfa Romeo Storico, but due to the fact that Museo sent me a letter, that they open during the week-end only, we had to choose our next stop again.

Finally we decided to take a rest for 2 days in Bertoletta Village before return to Estonia.

11th day and 12th day. Peschiera Del Garda.

"We'll just stay there near the pool and relax" decided we, but we failed. We could withstand such relax one day only and on the 12th day we wanted to go somewhere else. So we took our girls to AquaPark...

That was our last day before route back.

13th / 14th days. Peschiera del Garda - Volandia - Road Home

As we run out of the time with our will to stay more in this beautiful country. The route back was divided into two days with stop in Volandia.

Volandia is the one of the biggest flight museums in Europe. It located on the territory of Caproni factory and has the first european airplane (as they say).

We visited the airplane of the pope, became the astronauts...

But the real jewel of Volandia for me is Bertone Collection.

Gruppo Bertone was the one of the famous cars designers, which designed cars for famous brands, like Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Porsche, BMW, Lancia, Lamborghini and so on. After bankruptcy of the Bertone, whole collection was bought from auction by ASI club and placed for exhibition here. I tried to sort best of them, but they all are sooooo beautiful...

That was the last stop in the country which we plan to visit more and more... Next is 2 days route home via Switzerland, Germany and our Baltic States...

While this trip is ended, the summer still goes on and who knows what surprises it will bring to us in August... Maybe another crazy trip... or something else...