As I continue to try blogging and as I continue these scenic travels, I realize that I am frequently using the same adjectives. I think that I should consider using a thesaurus to find alternate words for “beautiful”, “picturesque “, “spectacular”, etc. I will work on it but the scenery makes this difficult. Italian seems to be an expressive language; maybe I should try using it until I start using a thesaurus.
Today was a bello day for some sightseeing. It had rained overnight and, though cloudy, the temperature was good and the air was fresh. We decided to drive to the other end of the lake to Sirmione.
We decided to take a route that followed the lakeshore and would take us through some of the other towns on the lake. This seemed like a perfetto plan on google maps. But, we did not take into account the one lane highway winding it’s way through crowded tourist towns.
The scenery was molto bene fantastico but the trip was straziante slow. The lake is big and stupendo; the trip which we expected to be an hour and a half turned out to be several hours. It seemed that every time we looked at Google maps the estimated arrival time got later. At one point we let the map take us on an alternate route. This was a big mistake as the alternate road was steep, windy and molto,molto narrow. Brandon did well to navigate us through a couple of tight squeezes.
The trip was nevertheless interesting. Lake Garda is obviously a major tourist destination. All along the route there were hotels, resorts, restaurants and campgrounds. The geography changed as well. Riva del Garda is surrounded by impressionante mountains but Sirmione is in a valley with agricultural lands (lots of grapes) butting up to the tourist areas along the lake.
Sirmione looks to be a molto wealthy district – large homes on the water, expensive looking hotels and magnifico parks. A large isthmus goes out into the lake. Near the end of the isthmus there is a castle. The castle protected the point which contains an old town, more pretty parks, stupendo hotels and some Roman ruins.
We had a nice lunch and spent quite a bit of time there. Most of the pictures that I have attached were taken in Sirmione.
All in all a good day – especially after finding a route back to Riva del Garda on the highway.
Ciao