A glimpse into… Italy!

I’m back with round 2 of these holiday posts because I found writing about Switzerland so much fun, so I thought I’d now do Italy!! I actually went to Italy straight after Switzerland, so this post is very late but finally finished 🙂

We stayed in a little town called Desenzano del Garda, which is on the coast of Lake Garda. Although there were a few British and French tourists, the majority of people either lived in the town, or were Italians visiting from other places in the country. Unlike Interläken, (which I wrote about in my last holiday post) I really didn’t see many older people around. I realised after that was probably because Desenzano is kind of like a party town ie. it gets lit at night. Anyway, I love a busy town so going out at night was really fun (not to go clubbing, just to get ice-cream).

views walking up to the town centre

You could take a boat ride from Desenzano to the other towns located on the coast, which was really nice as it was a hop-on-hop-off system, so we were able to explore the majority of the other little towns and see what they had to offer. They all had different attractions to see: ruins, little stalls and markets, pottery shops etc.

Desenzano itself had a few different clothes shops, which by the way, were all selling the same clothes but for different prices?? There were one or two high end fashion stores, and then the rest of the shops were just selling souvenirs and tourist t-shirts. There was also a really nice Sunday flea market with just racks and racks of vintage clothes in the middle of the square- I would’ve ended up buying loads but I only got to spend 1/2 an hour there before I got dragged away by my sister for our trip to a neighbouring town.

a neighbouring town, which I think was called Bardolino??

We spent a whole day in this neighbouring town, and the narrow streets had little trinket shops and soap shops dotted along the edges, and I bought a lot of jewellery because all the bracelets and rings were so pretty, and also super cheap! My sister and I did a boat trip in this town as well, so we pedalled around Lake Garda for a while. 

From Desenzano, we also took the train to Verona (super pretty!) and spent the whole day there site seeing. We basically saw everything there is to see in Verona in about 6 hours- very productive. We went to art museums, the Verona Arena,, the Torre dei Lamberti and we also went to look at Juliets balcony. Be warned if you go the balcony though: when I got near the balcony it was like a mosh pit. I have no idea why people were so intent on pushing and shoving to get close to it but I guess love makes people do strange things??? I will admit, seeing the balcony in real life was quite cool 🙂

Also, you can go to the top of the Torre dei Lamberti to look over the town (amazing views) and there is a lift that will take you up but I walked the whole way. I just wanted to insert that in and let you all know that I, for once, did the non-lazy option.

at the top of the Torre dei Lamberti

 

one of the empty streets in Verona- this was one of the worse photos, but I can’t find any of the nice ones I took!

 

wall by the balcony

the arena!

in the middle of the city

We did also go to Milan for a few hours before flying back to the UK, but by that point I think we were too tired to do anything other than sit in the airport and watch netflix. I do really want to go back to Italy at some point, because there is still so much to see that we didn’t have time for on this trip. Hope you enjoyed!

Stay fresh,

Minty xo