Blogs from Peschiera del Garda, Veneto, Italy, Europe

Guten Tag – we are still in Switzerland. Well for a few more hours. We paid up. Swiss campsites are notoriously expensive coming in at about 23 euros a night. Wouldn’t want to stay on them for too long. We drove through the mountains seeing more and more waterfalls as the snow was beginning to melt. At the same point as normal the sat nav gave up the ghost . It seems the mountains are too high and closed in and the satellites disappear from view. We have got used to it now as it happens so many times. On to the achievement that is the Gotthard Tunnel . We drove through the St Gotthard Tunnel. A marvellous achievement . The Mersey Tunnel pales into insignificance. Mile after mile it runs under the mountains. Nothing gets ... read more

Tuesday 29th March 2011 A long drive today using the motorways to take us along the coast before turning north towards Milan and then east to Lake Garda. The coastal and mountain section is quite spectacular with a series of tunnels and viaducts for many miles – we counted 102 tunnels ! At Lake Garda we took a lakeside stroll to watch the sunset before grabbing a take away pizza from one of the site’s three excellent restaurants – yum. Wednesday 30th March 2011 Chilling, School and Domestics today before an afternoon stroll in the other direction along the lake side. Thursday 31st March 2011 Walk to town today to the local farmer’s market to pick up a few provisions. This included a delicious freshly roasted chicken which we took back to site and ate with ... read more

I got up early for a run again and went but I first drove small town nearby called Monzambano, just as somewhere different to running by the side of the lake. Yesterday’s guess that the roads were so busy because of everyone heading back to Germany was almost certainly the reason. We were easily able to find some spare sunbeds without towels on them. That was great news, as today was intended to be another relax by the pool day. Our daughter took up the offer of some of the activities – the treasure hunt and some salsa dancing. There was also a football match, which our son jumped at, however, it all seemed to go horribly wrong as the rep left without fully organising it and there was no one to referee (and there was ... read more

I got up early and went for a run down to the lake and along the edge for a while, which was pleasant but, even at that time and even though it was early, it was still hot and humid. There are two things that were quickly apparent about holidaying in Italy: the first is that it's very expensive, although this is probably more to do with the state of the pound than Italian prices. We went to a local supermarket to stock-up and we were really quite shocked by the prices. The second is that it’s very popular with the German’s. There were virtually no Brits there, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing (see ). We thought we would spend our first day by the pool, but it was a given that there was ... read more