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| Hand weaving at Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua in Venice |
After visiting Chandolin and following Ella Maillart's story through the Valais, we had returned to Camping Molignon in Les Haudères for the night. Morning sent us downhill again with Shehzadi, our 2024 Toyota Tundra, and Chetak, the Toyota Hilux Invincible-X of Odyssean Journey. The Alps were not finished with the trucks yet.
The previous leg from Lyon through Switzerland had ended among mountain roads. This one pointed toward Italy: Sierre, Brig, a train under the Simplon massif, Lake Como and then Venice. It would take two days, which was reassuring. Venice already has enough canals without adding a schedule emergency.
Chandolin to Venice Overland, Switzerland to Italy: Simplon Tunnel, Lake Como & Marco Polo — Post Summary
After visiting Chandolin and overnighting at Camping Molignon in Les Haudères, we descended to Brig and put Shehzadi and Chetak on the car train through the Simplon Tunnel. Italy brought Lake Como and Castello di Vezio, followed by Venice's Bevilacqua silk looms, Marco Polo's historic neighborhood, Murano glass, Shehzadi's first international oil change and Piazza San Marco.
| What's Covered | |
| 🧭 | Route at a Glance — Les Haudères → Brig → Iselle → Lake Como → Venice |
| 🚂 | Simplon Tunnel — Brig–Iselle car train into Italy |
| 🏔️ | Lake Como and Castello di Vezio |
| 🧵 | Venice — Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua and historic hand weaving |
| 🗺️ | Marco Polo's Venice — Corte del Milion and Teatro Malibran |
| 🔥 | Murano Glass — workshop visit and the 1291 furnace decree |
| 🔧 | Shehzadi's Oil Change — Ferri Auto Venezia Mestre |
| 🥂 | Piazza San Marco — Venice and the Silk Roads |
| ➡️ | Next — Lake Bled, Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb |
From Camping Molignon in Les Haudères, where we had returned after visiting Chandolin, we headed down through the Valais with Shehzadi and Chetak. Sierre came first, then Brig, where the trucks would stop being road vehicles for about twenty minutes and become railway cargo. Italy waited on the other side of the Alps.
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| The Vagabond Couple with Shehzadi near Sierre, Switzerland |
This was a two-day leg rather than one heroic sprint: Brig to Iselle by car train, Lake Como and Castello di Vezio, then Venice for silk weaving, Marco Polo, Murano glass, Shehzadi's first oil change abroad and an evening in Piazza San Marco.
To: Venice, Italy
Distance: Approx. 550 km over two days, including side trips
Method: Overland by truck; Brig–Iselle car train through the Simplon Tunnel
Vehicles: Shehzadi — 2024 Toyota Tundra; Chetak — Toyota Hilux Invincible-X
Key Stops: Sierre · Brig · Iselle · Lake Como · Castello di Vezio · Venice · Murano
Route at a Glance
- Les Haudères → Sierre → Brig — descend through Valais to the BLS terminal
- Brig → Iselle — 20-minute car train through the Simplon Tunnel
- Iselle → Lake Como — northern Italy and Castello di Vezio
- Lake Como → Venice — east across northern Italy
- Venice — Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua
- Corte del Milion — Polo family site and Teatro Malibran
- Murano — glass workshop
- Venezia Mestre — Ferri Auto Toyota service
- Piazza San Marco — evening walk and Silk Roads context
- Next — Lake Bled, Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb
Simplon Tunnel: Brig–Iselle Car Train to Italy
Brig supplied one of the more useful Alpine shortcuts: the BLS car transport to Iselle. We drove Shehzadi and Chetak onto the open vehicle wagons, stayed with the trucks and let the railway do the climbing. The scheduled trip takes about twenty minutes. For two pickups that had spent months accumulating road miles, being carried for a change felt suspiciously civilized.
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| Brig–Iselle car train: loading Shehzadi in Switzerland and arriving at Iselle in Italy after the Simplon Tunnel. | ||
The first Simplon rail tunnel opened in 1906. At almost 20 kilometers, it was the world's longest railway tunnel when it opened, an engineering distinction that time has since reassigned to newer holes through larger mountains. Inside, our view was mostly darkness, wagon structure and the comforting knowledge that no hairpin turn could possibly appear.
Then daylight returned at Iselle. The trucks rolled off the train in Italy, and the border had passed underneath the Alps rather than over them. Even Shehzadi seemed pleased with this arrangement, although her formal opinion on railway policy remains unavailable.
Lake Como and Castello di Vezio
Northern Italy quickly traded tunnel walls for lake roads. By the time Lake Como appeared, food had become a priority of strategic importance. We stopped beside the water for pasta, lake fish and gelato, then aimed uphill toward Castello di Vezio above Varenna.
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| The Vagabond Couple with Shehzadi beside Lake Como, Italy |
The climb was a useful reminder that medieval defensive sites rarely chose locations for the convenience of full-size American pickups. Castello di Vezio formed part of the fortified system around Varenna and served as a refuge during attacks. From the heights above the lake, the logic was obvious: the view reached far across the water, and anyone approaching had the disadvantage of being visible while still climbing.
We came back down with the clutches, brakes and passengers still on speaking terms, then turned east across northern Italy. Venice was next.
Venice: Luigi Bevilacqua Silk Workshop
Venice was familiar territory, but arriving overland with Shehzadi was new. Our prior visits had involved trains rather than finding somewhere sensible to place a Toyota Tundra beside a city famously short on roads.
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| Back in Venice: The Vagabond Couple overlooking the Grand Canal |
After checking in, we returned to the part of Venice where wheels become largely theoretical and used the vaporetto. The next morning we went to Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, building directly on the silk in Lyon, France from the previous post.
Luigi Bevilacqua founded the modern company in 1875, while the family's weaving tradition reaches farther back. Inside the Venice workshop, historic eighteenth-century hand looms are still used for demanding fabrics including soprarizzo velvet. Watching the machinery work made the phrase “labor intensive” look almost lazy.
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| Inside Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua: historic looms, the workshop history display, hand weaving and an ornate textile pattern. | |||
The guide walked us through the workshop's methods and patterns while a weaver operated the loom at a pace that made our own coordination skills look negotiable. We handled richly worked fabric and watched thread become a three-dimensional surface one careful pass at a time.
The stop also tied neatly back to Lyon. France's silk industry grew partly through expertise brought by Italian and other foreign workers, while Venice had its own long textile tradition. Two cities, two very different workshops, and rather more evidence than was needed that silk has always been an excellent way to make simple cloth economically complicated.
Marco Polo's Venice: Corte del Milion
Earlier in Morocco, we had visited Ibn Battuta in Tangier. In Venice, the obvious traveler to look for was Marco Polo. We went to Corte del Milion, the area associated with the Polo family residence, expecting history and finding something more Venetian: history layered under later buildings.
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| Venice's Polo family site: the plaque-marked exterior and the Teatro Malibran interiors now occupying part of the historic area. | ||
The original Polo family house does not survive intact. Structures around Corte del Milion are traditionally connected with its old foundations, while Teatro Malibran occupies part of the historic site after the former residence was lost following a late-sixteenth-century fire. The plaque is therefore less a preserved-house attraction than a marker for a neighborhood whose medieval layers have been built over repeatedly.
That anticlimax was oddly appropriate. Marco Polo's importance does not depend on one surviving wall. Venice was one of the major western cities and markets linked into the wider Silk Roads networks, and Polo became its best-known traveler toward Asia. Months later, our own route would enter China from the west and continue to Kashgar. The transport had changed. The appetite for going farther had not.
Murano Glass: Furnaces, Horses and the 1291 Decree
Later, a vaporetto carried us to Murano. In 1291, Venice's Grand Council ordered glass furnaces moved outside the main urban center because of fire risk. Murano became the enduring center of Venetian glassmaking, which is a remarkably successful outcome for what began as a municipal fire-safety decision.
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| Murano glass workshop: a glass-horse demonstration beside the furnace |
At the workshop, a master shaped a glass horse in under two minutes. One artisan then let us try blowing glass ourselves. Nothing valuable was destroyed, which seemed a respectable result for first-time furnace work. The finished pieces in the room made our brief contribution look exactly as amateur as it was.
Shehzadi's Oil Change at Ferri Auto Venezia Mestre
Venice also supplied a less romantic but very necessary milestone: Shehzadi's first international oil change. We took the Tundra to Ferri Auto Venezia Mestre, a Toyota sales and service center, for oil and filter service plus an undercarriage inspection.
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| Shehzadi at Ferri Auto Venezia Mestre: outside the Toyota dealership and inside the service bay. | |
The staff handled the large North American pickup with calm efficiency and some understandable curiosity. One mechanic gave the hood a gentle pat and said, “Bella macchina!” Shehzadi accepted the compliment with the composure expected of a truck that had just received fresh oil.
Piazza San Marco: Venice and the Silk Roads
That evening we walked through Piazza San Marco while orchestras played around the square. St. Mark's Basilica caught the fading light in its mosaics; we supplied the spritz and cicchetti. Venice can make a normal evening feel expensive even when the pigeons are working for free.
The Silk Roads were never one road with one permanent western terminus. They were networks of routes, ports and markets, and Venice became one of the important western cities within those exchanges. Silk, glass, spices and stories moved through the republic over centuries, while Marco Polo gave the city a particularly durable connection to travel across Asia.
For our own 2025 expedition, Venice supplied a useful historical counterpoint. Months later we would reach Kashgar from the opposite direction, after crossing far more of Eurasia by road. The later 2025 expedition summary makes that arc look tidy on a page; from the cab, it involved considerably more tunnels, ferries, borders and fuel pumps.
Next: Lake Bled, Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb
The next leg leaves Venice for Slovenia, with Lake Bled, Ljubljana and Maribor on the way before the Obrežje crossing into Croatia and Zagreb. Italy had supplied silk looms, a car train, glass furnaces and fresh engine oil. Shehzadi was ready for another border.
