Ti Amo Italia!

Smiling faces, warm welcomes, friendly people, sensational food & wine - my heart was SO happy in Italy!! We are just home from five glorious days in beautiful Italia! We stayed in the little village of Sirmione located on a small peninsula in the south of Lake Garda and loved every minute of exploring the area. We stayed in a gorgeous little, family run hotel, called Corte Regina situated in the heart of Sirmione, just steps to the lake shore and the city's castle, enjoying the clock tower bells each hour. Nick surprised me with a huge bouquet of beautiful flowers and champagne in our room to celebrate our 12 year anniversary - what a fabulous way to start our Italian vacation!! 

The first couple of days were raining and windy, not ideal vacation weather, but we still enjoyed walking the cobblestone streets and indulging in hot chocolate the Italian way ... pure dark chocolate, melted ... hold the milk ... it was heaven in a cup!! 

The skies cleared up a bit and we eagerly set off for Venice!! After a slight delay due to Polly getting severely car sick, we made it to Venice just in time for lunch. We parked the car, crossed the street and we were right there!! Such an amazing sight - we were all smiling from ear to ear - so pretty!! The kids were amazed that there were no cars and they were so excited to cross all the bridges, wave to all the people travelling by boat and adventure down narrow walkways. We found a fabulous little restaurant for lunch that appeared to be full of locals - exactly what we were after. After lunch we spent the day exploring Venice which of course included a gondola ride - which we thought we'd do 'for the kids' but we all loved it! Our gondolier grew up in Venice and owned the gondola we rode in - he was full of history and even though he didn't sing, he made sure we all had a memorable ride. Venice was fabulous - we all had an amazing day...we went home very tired and happy after enjoying fabulous Venizia!

The next was a day in gorgeous Bardolino - a small town on the south east of the Lake. 

Nick arranged to rent a bike and the kids and I enjoyed exploring yet another gorgeous area of Italy. Blue sky and sunshine and endless views of hillside vineyards made for a fabulous day on the lake. Nick did a fun, challenging, cold, windy ride up the east coast of the lake, beside the cliffs of Monte Baldo then returned through the vineyards back to Bardolino - navigation was the biggest problem but he loved every minute on his rented Pinarello ;-) We drove to Garda for dinner which is the next town north of Bardolino - yet another beautiful lakeside town where we enjoyed more fabulous food.

We spent our final day wandering around Sirmione in the sun before a pleasant 4 hour drive home through Austria....roads that I am sure will become very familiar to us as I am already longing to return to beautiful Italia!!