Day 129 - 05/09/19 - Palmanova & Gemona, Italy

Today was time to move on again, having had quite a few days in and around Venice.

We travelled north to Palmanova, a 9 star-shaped fortress town.

It was exceptionally quiet today, as we walked around.

There mustn't be much call for a post office - we saw a mobile one set up along one of the roads.

The mum of a friend of ours was from Palmanova, where their family had a bar/bistro called La Buona Vita. His grandad brokered horses for the army in stables behind La Buona Vita, and our friend’s dad met his mother in the bar of the bistro during WWII.

A lovely romantic story, until you then hear that she had lost a lot of her family there due to the war. One of her brothers did survive, he was shot but had to play dead, and afterwards was taken to a doctor who gave him a ‘person to person’ blood transfusion using his own blood !

Also, the Nazis put all women/children in the square and was going to kill them, until the priest offered his life. The liberating Aussie forces arrived just in time.

The surviving uncle lived on to his 90s, running the Buona Vita until he retired.

We happened to park up just off the road where they had lived, and went to see if we could find the bar/bistro. We did find it, although it is now called ‘Da Baffo’. It would have been lovely to have been able to go inside, but unfortunately it was closed today. However, we did manage to have a video call with our friends so that they could see what it looks like now - technology is truly amazing !

We then made our way to Gemona, where we had seen a lovely hotel - The Willy Hotel - which offered Motorhome stopovers for free including water and electricity.

We arrived and parked up before having a wander around the grounds, which were just beautiful.

We went into the bar and had a beer and chatted it the bar staff. We were asking about the food and he explained that they had a special tasting menu this evening. He gave us the menu and we went to google translate, but he said that if I read it out in Italian, then he would let us know what it was in English - I couldn’t have done too bad, as he knew what I was saying - unless he was just being kind 😂

Stopover Information