The reason we have not written anything for a few days is that four out of six members of our family have visited Italy. It was a transition year school tour and we spent four beautiful and intense days in the area around Lake Garda.
On the first day we visited the San Siro stadium in Milan which is an interesting building with quite impressive architecture.
We admired some very skilful graffiti on the way to the stadium. Unfortunately some pictures are a bit blurry as we had to take them from inside the bus, but you can get an idea of the skill involved.
We travelled on for a couple of hours and reached our main destination, the lovely Lake Garda and the ancient town of Sirmione. Here we went on a boat tour and saw the old roman villa called the “grotto of Catullus” on top of a hill which is a three-story building from around 150AD. We also saw the Scaliger Castle built at the end of the 12th century. Sirmione is a very beautiful town and we walked around it for a couple of hours admiring the architecture and plants.
On our second day we visited Garda land, a fun park with many roller-coasters and other attractions. We had a lovely view of the lake from the floating island which revolved high above the ground.
On our third day we went to the beautiful town of Malcesine and took the Panoramic cableway to the top of Mount Baldo. The views were very impressive and we saw many olive trees and vineyards on the way up the mountain.
After that we travelled on to Verona and had an absolutely beautiful time, walking around the old squares and streets, visiting Juliet’s house and taking in all the sights. Many balconies looked very pretty and there were also a lot of roof gardens to be seen. In the evening we were very tired from walking all day.
Letters for Juliet.
On our last day we travelled to Venice and took a guided tour of the fantastic building and canals. We wish we could have spent more time here, walking across the many bridges, marvelling at the architecture, going on a trip in a gondola and admiring all the beautiful and colourful glass items for sale. All too soon it was time to head back to the port and our bus for the airport.
We arrived back home, tired but happy. We hope the Italian sun will shine on us again sometime in the future. It was lovely to see all the small holdings along the way where the Italians were growing their own grapes, olives and vegetables as well as keeping chickens and sheep. We wish we could have had more time to stop and maybe have a chat to some of them about their growing endeavours but it will have to be on another trip when we have more time and no fixed schedule. For now we are happy to have had the opportunity to visit Italy, albeit a bit too briefly.
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