Lake Garda

A change of location for our summer holidays this year, and rather than a package holiday, we cobbled one together ourselves. Flights from East Midlands (excellent airport - not as busy/overpowering as Manchester or as desolate as Leeds Bradford) to Verona, car hire and a drive of 30 minutes to a campsite in Cisano on the shores of the Lake. Our accommodation was an air conditioned mobile home, courtesy of Thomson Al Fresco; not huge (and if we'd been cursed with bad weather, it would have been very cramped), but well appointed and comfortable.




The campsite was enormous (1000 pitches?), with playgrounds for the kids, bike hire, tennis, badminton, ping pong and crazy golf all available. The swimming pools were probably a bit too small for the campsite, but they're apparently building an aqua park on site for next summer - and there's always the Lake to swim in.

Driving round the lake was a very sedate affair - it took us an hour to drive the relatively short distance to Malcesine - so the Garda ferries were very useful. There was also v little parking in the towns around the Lake, and as we'd been upgraded to a mahoosive Alfa, that limited parking options even further.




We ventured onto the rotating cable cars to the top of Monte Baldo and took in the view, as well as watching the madmen paragliding off the top of it. It was a sign of just how hot it was that even though we'd been told to take our jackets to the top because it was normally v chilly at that altitude, when we got to the top it was still in the mid-twenties.




We also went to Sirmione and climbed to the top of the Rocco Scaglieri (in 38 degree heat, because we're idiots). Beautiful views from the top. We didn't manage to get round to the Groves of Catullus, unfortunately - it was so unbelievably hot that the thought of walking any further than the town was a non starter.




We also took in the Botanical Gardens in Gardone - beautiful gardens redeveloped by the artist Andre Heller which abound with art installations by the likes of Roy Lichenstein,




and the surreal Il Vittoriale - a monument to fascism that includes a battleship perched halfway up a mountain. (Un)fortunately for us, because the house was shut, that meant we couldn't walk up the side of the mountain to get a closer look at the boat - we stuck to walking round the gardens and observing the strange fascist symbolism in the ornaments.




What's good about the area is that although the further up the lake you go, the more mountainous it becomes, at the south of the lake it is very flat and there is a slew of stuff to do all in the same area. Garda Land (Italy's Alton Towers), Movieland, Sea Life and Park Aqua situated next to each other about five miles from our campsite, with a Safari Park another few miles along. The safari park was excellent - even though the wolves were in hiding - and we managed to wear out the kids completely by about 3pm.




So we didn't exhaust the area completely, leaving it a possible holiday destination for 2012. The older the kids get, the more likely it will be that they'll enjoy a day trip into Venice, for example, or a look at the centre of Verona. This year, we decided that if we went to Venice, Sam would probably fall in a canal - he is that sort of child :)