And to Chioggia

We have subtracted some days from our time in San Severino Marche, so as to be able to visit Chioggia, staying in Enrico's spectacular apartment with this view, from 27 to 31 March.

photo from airbnb ad https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/1576761

So we have brought forward our booking at Forli to 20-27 March. We will drop off the car in Bologna on 27 March, not 31 March, and travel by train from Bologna to Chioggia.

There are a number of reasons to go to Chioggia. It continues to the north our excursion around the lower Po. It has its own beauty, reportedly a lot of determined character, a serious working, mainly fishing town. A daily fish market. A possible journey over water to Venice, recalling Eric Newby's wilful decision to arrive out of the mists of the sea in On the Shores of the Mediterranean. And then, not least, there is the alleged addiction of women in Chioggia to crochet. Helen is addicted to crochet (wonderful shift from complex management responsibilities at work) and moving smartly towards higher levels with more complex patterns and some of her own, now adept in the calligraphic language of crochet which means she buys from eBay crochet magazines from Russia and the Ukraine with classy dames in spectacular and sophisticated garments, which can be read without knowing Russian. It will be nice if she could join a circle of women doing such in Chioggia.

Then on 31 March, three trains to reach Mantova. There is a short 'veloce' journey from Rovigo to Monselice on the main line Bologna to Venice, but the journeys from Chioggia to Rovigo and Monselice to Mantova will hopefully be more languorous, through bucolia, marshland, hills and flat lands, nature reserves, hard working farms and towns with great history.