[2019]
[2019]
OUR FAMILY HOLIDAYS
0227 Overseas Holidays – Rimini, 1976
With our third foreign holiday, and our children somewhat older, we became more adventurous. To start with, we weren't particularly adventurous. We went to Rimini on the Adriatic coast of Italy. This was, as we had experienced before, sun, sea and sand.
Even so it was still of interest since it was Italian rather than Spanish and the tourism was slightly more sophisticated. Again we stayed in a hotel on the beach. It was a relatively cheap but for once the accommodation was quite comfortable, though the shower room was as usual somewhat grubby, and we did spend more time beach here since it was a much better beach.
We once more had meals provided by the hotel. On the other hand they were so skimpy that every night we had to take children out to alocal restaurants to fill them up with another meal. As usual, we spent some time wandering around Rimini going to the local tourist sites; including several mini ‘theme’ parks and a quite impressive model ’global village’.
We took the obligatory day trip to Florence. As was the tradition on such trips, we stopped just outside the city, to visit a ‘leather factory’ where the courier presumably received a commission on the sales he brought in! As a result, and also as usual, we didn’t arrive in Florence until after all the museums had closed; and left before they reopened. Accordingly, we saw just the main square and the Ponte Vecchio bridge – and were just as disappointed with the city.
After a while, we started to get even more adventurous, when we went by train to Ravenna. We went by train since it was not that popular a tourist attraction. The train journey, if somewhat scary where we weren't certain of the language or what we were doing, was an exciting experience. In the Ravenna itself we saw the golden mosaics in the cathedral which are very impressive -- as well as very old – and which had been the main objective of our excursion. We were even more impressed, though, by the blue mosaics in the princess's tomb in the grounds that cathedral. As a bonus there was also the big tomb, with its enormous stone roof, which was the burial place of the king of the Goths.
The longest trip was from there was to Venice. As usual we drove for several hours before parking at the station on the mainland, and then being taken by boat to St Mark's Square. There we were decanted and had something like two to the three hours to explore the whole of the city! Despite the short time, the children were impressed by Venice and we did see the main sites. At that stage I still thought Venice was a lovely city. It was only later that I came to feel that it was something like a film set, with painted facades and scaffolding behind them. But at that time it was a good experience.
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