Lake Garda & Desenzano

One of our best day trips in our week in Italy was the trip to Lake Garda and Desenzano.  We arranged to meet our friends from Vicenza, the Mabie's, there in the late afternoon for dinner.  Lake Garda is the largest lake in Italy, located about halfway between Milan and Padua, and running mostly north and south and extending into the alps.  The lake is 32 miles long and 10 miles across at the widest.

Lake Garda is a popular vacation and resort destination for Italians and as we approached the lake its was clearly built out to support holiday visitors.  We drove north up the eastern shore for several miles and finally picked a spot where we could park the car and get out to walk along the water.  The lake was beautiful, there were boats of all types around, beautiful flowers were blooming, people were swimming, and it was HOT!  We should have taken out swim suits with us in retrospect.

We finally found a bar/cafe along the water where we could sit in the shade and have something cold to drink.  It was a great spot to watch the crowd and enjoy the view, but there was little breeze and we were still quite hot even sitting in the shade.  We relaxed there awhile then headed for the car.  Along the way we spotted a beautiful house with nice gardens that we stopped to enjoy.

Back in the car we drove around the southern shore of the lake toward Desenzano, which was quite a distance away.  We found a couple of other nice spots to stop and take some photos, and we generally enjoyed the drive and the scenery.  When we finally arrived in Desenzano and messaged our friends, we arranged a meeting place near the harbor and the lighthouse.  From our parking spot we had a small walk to the harbor area and spotted another beach.  Just like the earlier beach we saw this one was very rocky, but still full of people.  Neither beach was sandy, but that wasn't stopping the vacationers.  The beaches were full and busy.

We met up with our friends, walked around the town, explored the harbor and lighthouse, and took some nice photos.  Desenzano is a picturesque town with nice shops and pretty pedestrian streets, typical of many old towns in Italy but especially nice there.  But the harbor and lighthouse were especially nice and made a nice backdrop for some photos.  I captured some good shots of Sylvia and her daughter at the lighthouse.

Finally it was time for us to drive a short distance to dinner at a restaurant our friends had recommended that was hard to get tables.  She had made our reservations several days earlier. The view over the lake with the mountains in the background looked impressive, but it was very hazy that night and the photos were not so good.  But the food was wonderful and we especially enjoyed watching them make their speciality, "Mac and cheese", but Italian style.  They first cooked pasta, then brought it to the dinning room in a skillet with cream sauce.  Then putting a liquor in a cheese wheel, they lighted the liquor to make a flame over which the finished cooking the pasta.  The flames also melted a thin layer of the cheese wheel which they then scrapped up and mixed with the pasta before serving it.  It was interesting to watch and delicious to eat.

There are a lot of beautiful photos in the album for this post that are worth taking the time to view.  Desenzano and Lake Garda were both beautiful and both are places we would like to see again on another trip. In fact we could enjoy spending a few days around Lake Garda and enjoying the lake activities.  Maybe on another trip we can arrange that!