Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Lake Garda and Lazise





Regine has been traveling all over Italy in a camper that she rented. She returned to Florence this week, and it was like she had never left! We had dinner, drank lots of wine, visited "cats corner" and listened to music in the piazzas.


This past weekend, after school on Friday, we set out in the camper for Verona. We had tickets to the opera in The Arena on Saturday for La Triviatta. Regine has a lot of experience with campers and camping, and it was easy to see why with all the Germans on the campgrounds! Seems to be a favorite vacation activity. The camper was nice and comfortable, although small inside, but large enough on the outside so that driving in some of the very narrow and small streets of Italy could be a challenge. Regine was an expert though!


Verona was a 3 hour drive away and Regine had identified a campground and tried to make a reservation, but had no answer at the number she was given. When we arrived, we found that the campground was closed, and there was only one other in the area. We pulled out the map and made our way up the hill to Castel San Pietro, only to find that they had no room! They advised us that the next nearest one was at Lake Garda.


Regina had been to Lake Garda before, but I never had, so we decided to head that way. It was only about a half hour drive away, and we found a camp site, and set up. The campground was very nice with a market, a restaurant, nice bathrooms with showers, a pool, and the lake below. Additionally, it was near the town of Lazise which is a beautiful walled city on the lake.


After we set up the campground, we walked into Lazise and looked over the city and had dinner. There is of course a lot of sea food there! Lago di Garda, is a huge lake, and very beautiful. The small town on the lake was medieval and also beautiful and caters strongly to German tourists. We heard more German spoken here than Italian!


I had brought a couple of bottles of wine from home for the trip, and after dinner we made our way back to the campground and talked for hours sitting by lantern light outside the camper drinking wine. We met two German men across the way who had arrived at the same time that we had and they joined us for some wine and conversation. Finally at around 2:30 a.m., we called it a night and blew out the lantern.


I know some of you were surprised that I was going camping, picturing me in some "rustic" location with no "creature comforts". Well, if you have visited me in Italy, you know that my creature comforts are few here anyway. The campground was nice, and the families around were also. There was very little "roughing it" going on!

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