eeko77 - Eric's Blog: Camping in Jesolo Italy Circa 1967 - On The Beach 30 Minutes From Venice

I was very fortunate as a kid to grow up in Europe courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. My father was a career USAF man and other than a short 10 month stay in Louisiana, I spent the first 10 years of my life living in Germany and Italy. One of my favorite memories was when I was about 8 years old and our family decided to take 30 days and drive from the Adriatic coast of Italy near Venice across Italy to the Italian Riviera and onto the French Riviera to Nice, San Tropez, Cannes and then back home to Germany. And we were going to camp the whole time. In the 60's the Europeans had some excellent campgrounds.

Well, we made it to Jesolo Italy which is about a 30 mintue drive up the coast from Venice. We set up our tent at the Motel-Camping Adriatico Campsite and proceeded to start our month long journey. It was great. Nice and warm.... and we wound up staying there for 3 and a half weeks.... haha, so much for our great journey. I can't remember a better summer as a kid though. All the time the ocean breeze sounded through the pine trees in the campground and in the background the ever present sound of the surf hitting the beach.

At that time I was fluent in German and Italian as well as American (too bad I am no longer like that). I remember playing Bocce Balls with other kids and flying kites on the beach. At night the smell of little food cooking from campsites as well as the deli at the campground wafted through the air. It was alway very cool at night and I would snuggle down in my sleeping back for a great nights sleep. In the morning it was up and a mad dash to the beach. I had a flat top haircut at the time and I remember after the first couple of days telling my mom I had a headache. She looked through my thin white hair and noticed I had sunburned the top of my head so it was a floppy hat and Nivea skin cream on my nose for the rest of the time we were there.

We did make a couple trips down to Venice for some site seeing and we were only about 40 miles from Vicenzia where where we lived befor moving to Germany and we visited with old neighbors and friends.

All in all it was a really great summer vacation. My mom and dad now have an entire wall in their family room with things from their travels around the world hanging including the original brochure from the campground in Jesolo Italy. Opening that brochure brought back a flood of memories........enough to write for days. Over the coming weeks I am going to scan in things from that wall and write about them. They also have 2 footlockers full of stuff like that....... going to be some fun times coming up.

Here are a couple photos of that beat up brochure from the summer of 1967