Next day a 10am flight to Venice and the water bus to the pier just near our accommodation – we booked most of our accommodation via Booking.com as there is no need to pay in advance & you can fairly easily cancel if things go askew – anyhow our “Romantic views over Venice” apartment has a spa bath…. thats does not work, free wi-fi….. that does not work, and the romantic view…. a brick wall – undeterred we finally start our holiday.

First mission is to get some CBD oil for my old aching body, this turns into a hour and half track around Venice which turns our successful and also gives us a bit of an understanding about how hard this place is to navigate & get around. Albeit, no vehicle or bicycle traffic, the streets are really crowded with tourists especially in the areas with iconic buildings etc. We spend the next two days at our leisure swanning around looking at old stuff and eating great food.

Day three, Friday – we found out a few days before we left that our accomodation guy has stuffed up the dates and we had a night with no accommodation booked – we hurriedly got onto the web and found there wasn’t much available apart from really expensive deluxe accommodation – we found the cheapest we could (AU$350 per night) which turned out to be a small room with shared bathroom & no coffee facilities, fridge etc – the one saving grace was that this place, coincidentally, turned out to be a few doors down from where the pre-party for the We’re Loud Music Festival was being held – which was the local branch of the communist party HQ – this concerned us a bit as a right wing goverment had just won power and we had images of a raid or something – but it turned out to be a great night – we met our tour/festival organisers from Slovenly Records Pete & Eunice and introduced ourselves to a ton of friendly people who we’d be travelling with for the next 10 days.

Saturday morning we move via water bus to a large campground, not on the Venice islands but on the mainland near the large shipping port – we get a cute little self contained cabin with everything we needed and a great little shop for supplies. One of the best things we bought with us was an AeroPress Coffee  maker – makes a mean cuppa and packs away very small.

After settling in we wander up to the local bar and spot a few people from the previous night – we also catch up with an old friend Bone from Amsterdam who’s band is playing tonite – when the band toured Aust (at that time a 2 piece) they came and stayed at our place for a few days & we have hung out with Bone several time on our overseas musical jaunts – a great guitarist, artist and a great guy.

We spent Sunday hanging about the campground and talking shit with all the new friends we have made, everyone has great stories – we have met some great people thru music but this bunch (eventually 50 of us travelling together) were simply amazing – from all over the world, Argentina, Brazil, US, Chile, Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Greece and of course Italy and other places as well – a super cool mix of accents permeate every conversation.

So tonite – it’s back on the boat for another dose of rawk – ADA ODA (Brussels), BLOODSHOT BILL (Montreal), LES LULLIES (Montpellier), DEMON’S CLAWS (Montreal). Les Lullies is my new favourite band – this guys didn’t just rock the boat the shook it! Demons Claw’s set was a bit slower but not much and again the night finished off well by a new bunch of DJ’s and again 3am finish. There is some pretty wild moshpitting and the crazy lunatics for the band Pussy Lickers from Portugal end up mostly nude sliding around the dance floor.

Monday we make our (now slightly weary) way to Venice railway station for a 4 hour train trip down the coast to the small coastal town of Termoli – the 50 of us are scattered all over the train as we have pre-booked seats but we are all keeping in touch via an (hilarious) WhatsApp group. A small group of our travellers discover the dining car and promptly drink the train dry after just an hour – we arrive at 8pm and all move on to find our hotels. We meet up again  for a few drinks – no bands tonite but plenty of music courtesy of the very enthusiastic Paco and his boom box. We have a great room overlooking the harbour and we get a great sunrise & breakfast.

We get up early on Tuesday to get on a large ferry to take us to the Tremetti Islands – a stunning place compromised of about 4 small islands – we arrive at one and are all ferried over to the larger island where we will have a show and stay the night. As we get off the dock we see a HUGE hill leading up into the island – luckily our heaviest bags are taken up in a van but we still have to drag our hand luggage up this huge hill, in the heat, which takes about 30 mins – obviously we all hit the bar when we reach the top.

Our accomodation is nice whitewashed hotel, typical of the Mediterranean islands, it’s off season so a lot of the hotels are closed so we pretty much have the island to ourselves. Turns out, for some reason, we have been assigned an apartment 10 mins walk away from the main building – we head down in a van with one of the hotel guys and another couple – turns out we are to share this apartment with the other couple who we had not met – after a brief intro, a few drinks and our introducing them to the wonders of our AeroPress coffee machine we become fast friends with Daphne & Julien from Belgium.

After a picnic (well liquid picnic) on the way down the hill we get the ferry back to the mainland late arvo and board a bus chartered for us to take us inland a bit to Lucera, a quaint little walled town, we arrive a bit later than  expected and are told we have 30 mins to check in and get ready before the bus leaves again to a “country estate” where there will be bands and a “feast” – I ask Pete, the organiser, and he confirms its an outdoor show, so by the time we get checked in and start to get ready we have about 10 min – we check the local weather and it says its going to be 10 degrees tonite and we haven’t really bought clothes for those sort of temps – so we decide to skip this show and stay in town for an amazing meal just 5 mins walk away in the beautiful town square – a few wines and in bed by midnight.

Turns out we dodged a bullet by skipping this show as it was apparently a bit of a shambles as the “estate” turned out to be a paddock and the “feast” turns out to be cold pasta served about midnight with no cutlery! ….and it was very very cold and the bus didn’t return till 2am – many a sore head on our fellow travellers who were all quite jealous of us.

Thursday noon its back on the bus bound for Naples – holy shit what a shambles that city is – so hectic!! – The bus arrives about 5pm and google maps tells us its a 13 min walk to our accomodation so, unsure of dodgy taxis, we decide to hoof it – big mistake – 40 mins later after dragging our bags over ancient cobble stones, up & down steps, thru crazy dangerous traffic we finally get to out accommodation – it looks pretty nice, very large, poor Jen is white and exhausted and I am a lather of sweat and the host insists on giving us a full tour of the apartment, shows how to turn the lights on and off, taps on and off, how the doors close etc etc which take about 10 mins – just when we thought it was over I needed the “key tutorial” 4 keys to get in front door, inner door, 2nd inner door and apartment door. We finally get settled and have quick bath and get a taxi to the bar we are all meeting up at before the show.   Due to govt restrictions (probably at the time Pete was trying to find venues) live music was not allowed in the city so he arranged a large recording studio to host the gigs – a great large soundproof, air conditioned room so it was pretty comfortable.We were told we had to be super quiet so we didn’t disturb the neighbours – that didn’t really matter as when we arrived there was about 1000 kids parting in the street outside – wild scene!