Saturday, July 5th, 2014

Charlotte and I headed out early (considering we went to bed at 2:00 am) to get our laundry which was ready at 10:00. Picked it up packed into pretty little bundles, and took it back towards our apartment, stopping for our morning strudel on the way. Once we were all ready to go, we headed out to the bus stop to get our bus for Sirmione.

We got our tickets at the tabbachi and then got on our bus. The driver apparently didn’t believe in turning the air on because it was super warm. It took about an hour through the countryside to get Sirmione. Peschiera di Garda seemed like a pretty nice vacation town too! The bus drove up the peninsula to the old town of Sirmione past all of these beach hotels and Charlotte was near tears when we arrived at the top, wondering why we’d brought her here just to rub all those places in her face! We walked over to the lake and saw all the ducks with their ducklings in that pretty rough water. Then on to the drawbridge that leads into the town.

By now it was lunch time, and Mark really wanted to find a restaurant near the water and boy did he. This place (Ristorante Il Grifone) was beautiful, right on the lake with the bluest water and the ruins in view too. Just perfect. The food was good too. I ordered pasta with sea asparagus and when it came I asked the waiter what exactly sea asparagus was. He said “It is asparagus. From the sea.” Alrighty then. Some kind of sea weed I guess. Very good and salty. Everyone else liked their meal too, which was good because it was expensive. By the time we were done with lunch, the swan and swanlings people were feeding had left which was probably a good thing – those are very large birds! We walked along the lakeside of Sirmione down to the public beach, then went up to the road and along that to get to the ruins of a Roman Villa. By now it was getting pretty hot and they charged to see the ruins which looked a lot like all of the other roman ruins we’d seen on this trip, so we decided to skip them. Fortunately for us, there was transportation back into the center of town in the form of Trenino, a little tourist train. Genevieve remembers Trenino most fondly of all things on our vacation, he came along at just the right time!

Now it was time for desert. Sirmione did not disappoint in the gelato department, with many fine establishments to choose from. After we were done with our gelato we toured the castle which gave us great views of the lake and also it’s an interesting castle and fun to climb around. Finally we went back to the bus stop where we boarded what I think was the same bus on the way home – it was still super hot and stuffy. Back to Verona, which was super crowded today, because it was Saturday all the people came in from the outlying areas to shop, eat, whatever. Earlier in the day we had started counting the number of boys/men with that ridiculous hairstyle, and in case you are wondering just during the trip to the bus stop, and then when we came back from Sirmione and walked back to our apartment, there were 52 with that hairstyle. 52!

We freshened up a bit and then went out to Verona to enjoy an apertivo on the Piazza Erbe. The frescoes really stand out at night, it’s just such a pretty place to be. We ate dinner at the same restaurant where we had our apertivo as it was easy. What a perfect day!

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