Chioggia in March Day 1
The last few months haven’t been easy and so this morning it’s something of a triumph to be letting Andrea load the bags into the car but to get behind the steering wheel myself. It’s early on a beautiful spring Sunday morning and even my least favourite motorway, the one between Milan and Venice, is behaving itself. Being Sunday, there are no trucks and we make good time. I stop after an hour and a quarter to stretch my legs and again after we leave the motorway but it’s really not far and we are at the meeting point with our host in Chioggia by 10.30.
We are lucky. Our host is very well organized and helpful, ideal for us as things are at the moment. We park, he loads our bags into his car, drives us to the apartment in the historical centre of Chioggia, within the ZTL area, carries our bags up the stairs and there we are. The apartment is delightful, bright, sunny and with a view of the canal as well as being warm and cosy. Everything is clean and new.
While the cleaning lady is finishing, we head off to explore Chioggia. First stop is the fish market, just a 4-minute walk away. Most of the stalls have finished but we get some last-minute reduced-price soles, locally fished, and then go to the bar just opposite where we have tickets for the free breakfast included with the apartment. There’s a sweet or savoury choice and normally I would snub what Italians call ‘a toast’ that is a toasted white bread sandwich containing cooked ham and cheese. Today, breakfast was a long time ago, lunch a mirage in the future and it seems delicious to me. We also get coffee, fruit juice and a bottle of water each. We have a quick look along Corso del Popolo and Riva Vena, busy with Sunday visitors already settling in at restaurants and cicchetterie.
The aperitivo in Chioggia and the surrounding area consists in a drink – Spritz, Prosecco, or whatever and a ‘cicchetto’, a sort of tapa, often a bruschetta with baccalà mantecato, or sardine in saor or tapas-sized rations of other typical dishes. They mostly seem to cost about 3 euros each (2026) so it’s a cheap way to try a number of local dishes to see what you’d like to have on a whole plate at the restaurant. The streets are quite crowded in the mild spring sunshine so we cross Ponte Vigo and then walk back down Fondamenta Canal Lombardo to the apartment, via a supermarket for a couple of basics because it will be closed in the afternoon. The cleaning lady is just finishing and so we manage a very late lunch of fried soles and vegetables.
After a short rest, having glimpsed Chioggia and decided we like it, the next curiosity is the sea. Chioggia is connected to the neighbouring Sottomarina by Isola dell’Unione and the bridge of the same name. It’s mid-Sunday afternoon and everywhere is very crowded. People walking in both directions, bikes, cars, electric bikes. There’s a cool wind but it’s sunny and pleasant. On the left it’s nice to walk next to the boats. Later on in the year there are boat trips to Venice or the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello.
On the other side of the bridge we keep straight through Sottomarina towards the sea. Sottomarina is also busy, locals in their Sunday best queueing outside the gelaterie. Eventually we get to the beach, and after another few hundred metres, to the shore and the sea. It’s a deep beach and the part near the sea is firm and good for walking. There are lots of people strolling on the beach – tourists, locals, daytrippers, families, dog-walkers. We walk north for a while then back towards Sottomarina and along the Fondamenta Lungolaguna where there’s the older part of Sottomarina. By now I’m seriously flagging, but there are a few benches to help me out.
Andrea has leftovers for dinner, I have vegetable soup and am in bed and fast asleep by 9.30pm.
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