Lago di Garda

The next morning after breakfast we set off for Lago di Garda (Lake Garda). Lake Garda is Italy's largest lake and one of the north's most visited locations. We hadn’t really spent much time looking into Lago di Garda, so didn't know a tremendous amount about it. We choose it as we had never been to the lakes up north in Italy before, and thought it might be cooler that our original plan to stay in southern Italy. And certainly cooler than Greece. We may have lived in Scotland, but we don’t want fried baby! Hehe!

We spent 4 days in the town of Bardolino, towards the southern tip of the long lake. Bardolino is a great place. Where it bordered the lake, it had a long and stunning boardwalk where you can sit and enjoy your dinner al fresco, have a gelato, like Zavian did, or just enjoy a nice walk. There are lovely little shops and everything is open late. It is a great place for families. Most people take a ferry to visit the some of the other towns that border the lake. There were a lot of tourists everywhere, especially Germans. Many of the menus and signs were in Italian and German. As a nice old Italian lady told me,” they invaded us once before, and now they invade us again as tourists.” It was no joke!

We stocked up on groceries as our apartment, Blue Lake Bardolino, had a kitchenette. The apartment was pretty good. We had private parking, a lift, and a private terrace where we ate most of our meals. Naim’s dad was planning to join us there for a few days, as he was not that far away at his home in France, but got a bad cough and couldn’t make it. We missed him!

Naim chilling on the porch, trying the surf the web, but it was poor. Hence, I am behind on blogging!

The next day, we decided to visit the nearby city of Verona. It was gorgeous. It’s huge ancient, arena hosts opera at night during the summer, which we could have loved to do if it wasn’t for baby’s bedtime. We saw a very strange pink baby man who made baby noises in a high pitched voice who was odd and somewhat scary!

We toured some beautiful churches and streets and had a lovely lunch in a cafe. The city is considered a world heritage site by UNESCO, and is probably most famous for Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, which was based in Verona. A highlight was definitely visiting the balcony of Juliet's house.

Statue of Juliet

Juliet's balcony

We spent the rest of our days mostly lakeside. We explored some of the other towns, Sirmione (gorgeous, but packed with tourists), Riva del Garda, Lazise, by both boat and car. We do think that Bardolino was by far the prettiest and were really happy we stayed there.

Decisions, decisions...

Divine seafood risotto

Our final lakeside adventure was a cable car summit to Monte Baldo in the Italian Alps. You have a spectacular view of lake Garda. Thank god we brought a jacket for Zavian, as it was freezing up there! Monte Baldo is 2,218 m (7,277 ft) high. The ride up and down was rather lengthy, as you go up half way, then have to get off and then queue up for the next cable car to the top. It took almost an hour each way, although they advertise it is 10 minutes! But the views...fabulous!

So far in Italy, Zavian has coped amazingly well. Bedtime has definitely become interrupted as most places don't serve dinner until 7:30, so he usually gets overtired, screams and cries in the middle of dinner and one of us takes him outside to rock him to sleep. Then he wakes up when we get home, and of course, wants to play for a while before he is ready for bed. Then milk and back to bed. We felt really bad, so we made quite a few meals at home in Bardolino and let him sleep. But we think he is used to his 8:00 pm nap and wakes up to party with us later anyway! Oh well!