As the plane begins its descent to Venice's Marco Polo airport, like most of the passengers, I'm staring out of the window at the birds-eye view over La Serenissima's maze of canals, churches and palaces. But from up here it's also clear that Venice is not much more than a dot in a lagoon that stretches over 200 square miles. And this is just the beginning of a spider's web of wetlands lagoons, canals, deltas and wildlife reserves that line the Adriatic as far as north Trieste.
This time, instead of getting the bus to Venice, we pick up a hire car and set off along the Adriatic shore the litorale in the direction of the beach resort of Lido di Jesolo. The road from the airport is soon running along the northern edge of the Venice lagoon.
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