Ah Chioggia, Chioggia

the walk from our apartment to the fish market.
If the market is on the little finger, the wharf
for the ferry to Venice is marked Porto
on the thumb where the nail is missing.
The railway station is on the wrist,
on the mainland.
Click any image to enlarge

Largely ignored is the old town of Chioggia, in the southern corner of the Venice lagoon.
[Chioggia pronounced key-ODJ-uh]

Hard to get to, no Pokemon-go-for-adults-with-inadequate-tech as abundant in Venice, Florence, Rome and as they refer to them at Tripadvisor CT and AC and want to visit them all in a week. Or more.

But hoards, if that's the right word for folk from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, go to the adjacent district of Sottomarina, which despite its name is not currently underwater but has beaches under thousands of umbrellas in summer.

The old town. where we will stay, is where the history resides.

This is a link to a google translation of a wonderful local presentation of the history of Chioggia. Even if you have no plans to go to Chioggia, if you have ever felt life is tough, if you have ever thought your community has had a trouble or two, please go and read the link. The difficulties in presenting lively proud local expression in a computer translation (or any other) adds to the telling of a history of clinging to life against adversities of the sea, of diseases and the bastards who come calling from land and sea, century by century.

We look forward to meeting people who have come through such and write about it without bad words, as I just did.

Perhaps the biggest pride is in the seafood.

If you search the web for Chioggia fish market you are taken to the 'Mercato Ittico'. Ittico translates into English as Ichthyal. And from a web search for ichthyal you get such as:

Is ichthyal a word in the scrabble dictionary? | Definition and Meaning

http://www.chioggiapesca.it/

Ichthyologists know about this word:

Ichthyology (from Greek: ἰχθύς, ikhthus, "fish"; and λόγος, logos, "study"), also known as fish science, is the branch of biology devoted to the study of fish. This includes bony fishes (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha).
[wikipedia]



Ms Google translates the 'who we are' (Chi siamo - pronounced 'key see-AR-mo') part of the Mercato Ittico web site thus:

Chioggia Fishing is a project born from the Fisheries Foundation for the enhancement of Chioggia local fish product, for its marketing and introduce it in the full possession of his peculiarities. Our fish is able to satisfy the most refined palates, in many varieties of species. Many species are unknown to most people because of this, our goal is not just to talk about the most famous species, but to know the genuineness of the smaller species.
Within the section "The Fish Market" the user can find the contacts of wholesale and retail dealers: the relationship between those who sell and those who want to buy will be so simple and effective.
In addition to this, we will get you in the culture of Chioggia fishing, with traditional recipes and explanation of fishing techniques. In this portal you will feel an active part of the vein of the city: the sea, the lagoon ... .l'acqua.

Wonderful, proud: "we will get you in the culture"! Italians at their determined best: wanting to get everyone, especially the rest of modern bloody Italy, to understand the real.

Note for readers. If you don't eat seafood perhaps stay in Bologna.

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.