It’s been 3 truly extraordinary (in every sense of the word) months since we finished our amazing time in Italy. And before we embark on our next, vastly different, adventure (heads up for Spicy Xmas!) we thought we best get some final pics from our last week in LUV with Italy up.

From a Tale of Two Countries in Umbria, we drove through Modena for lunch and onto Lake Garda, where we spent 4 nights in the most incredible villa (for 9 of us to celebrate a friend’s 40th) overlooking the pool, to the vines, to the town, lake AND mountains. We enjoyed sunsets at the house, went for a quick jog to lunch on Sermione, had a biblical moment when forced to line up 2 x 2 to board a hydrofoil, got treated to a lake cruise for Lea’s (early) birthday where we saw all the sights on the Lake including the nudist beach (reminding us, it’s never what you’re hoping to see), took a day drive out to the enchanting Soave and saw a snake slithering around our pool. And, yes, this was a real snake, it was too big to be a trouser/boardie snake given pool and lake temperatures (we had aforementioned beach for reference).

From Garda we headed to Venice. Having started our drive with under 2000km on the car back in Salerno, we ended up dropping it off on the Venetian lagoon (which was NOT the plan) with over 4000km on the dial and in desperate need of a new clutch and some TLC. Jokes on them for forcing the extra insurance on us. Along the way, we stopped briefly in Padua to see the Scrovegni Chapel and ingested yet another plate of bresola and mozzarella “salad”.

Venice was as magical as ever, and crowds appear at least to pre-COVID levels if not greater since our last time in 2015. We cicchetti’ed our way around the main islands, had a lovely dinner on a canal, enjoyed our view of the Rialto bridge from our room, loaded up on glass Santas, drank take away spritzes in Murano and sweated through a delicious seafood feast on the spectacular islands of Burano.

Our final breakfast was spectacular, trading rounds of cicchetti and wines at a brilliant and super popular little place near our hotel. We then caught a boat to the airport, got free negronis shoved in our faces, offloaded the last of our euros at the bar and headed for Dubai. It’s worth, again, noting how good the Moet bar is at the Dubai airport lounge. The same lovely gentleman did such a good job at keeping all our (6) glasses topped up with vintage Moet that we were even compelled to leave a tip! The final leg to Perth was amazing from what we remember……