Today saw us heading down Stelvio and driving in to Venice. Dressed as nuns. Oh dear.

There’s always a costume day on these events, and this year it was ‘Nuns on the Run’, so our best nuns outfits were dusted down and we gathered at the top of Stelvio for a photo shoot. And water pistol fight.

The drive down Stelvio was every bit as good as the drive up. Hundreds of hairpin bends, hot brakes, no tyres and narrow roads with roadworks in places meant there was an equal balance of joy and fear. The General Lee(xus) being five metres long and feeling very wide perhaps didn’t help…

After Stelvio, there was rain of biblical proportions. Perhaps the whole nun idea wasn’t so great. Visibility on the Italian motorways was near zero, but that didn’t stop the locals driving at crazy speeds. We felt very slow, and that perhaps wasn’t helped by the lonely single millimetre of tread our front tyres are carrying. Standing water isn’t fun right now.

Driving on to the Venice island and parking there, we headed by water bus to St Mark’s Square, where we managed to be the only people there, thanks to the huge amounts of rain coming down. our challenge was to be photographed with groups of people and, thanks to them all sheltering, it wasn’t too difficult to achieve.

It also meant we didn’t give Venice a fair crack, as it was dark, depressing and major sites were covered in advertising hoardings, hopefully covering up restoration work. Perhaps we’ll be back. Apparently the city flooded soon after we left, but we’re not sure how that’s possible.

From Venice it was off to Sottomarina for the night, before the final leg to Rome.

2010 Home2Rome