La dolce vita at Lake Garda - Impressions of Peschiera del Garda, Italy

I'm sorry I've been AWOL for the past couple of weeks. But my fingers were already cramping from writing my bachelor's thesis, so I wasn't able to type anything besides that damn thesis. But now I'm back and I brought you some pics and stories from the beautiful Lago di Garda in Italy.

To celebrate the separation from our thesises, me and my three girlfriends from University spent a wonderful weekend in Peschiera del Garda at the south bank of Lake Garda.We started out roadtripping from Munich and stopped for lunch in Innsbruck, Austria. After all the stress of the past few weeks this was the perfect start into a weekend without any pressure and la dolce vita - the sweet life!

Triumpfpforte

Innsbruck

When we got the Peschiera we were already relaxed and amazed by that cute little town.
Peschiera is right at the only outlet of the Lake Garda. Its old quarter is on a little island and our apartement's terrace went right out onto one of the canals.
When we booked the vacation in July there were no reviews of the place yet, so we kind of weren't sure what to expect for the extremely cheap price. But the Fiori sull'acqua-Apartments held everything they'd promised. The photos on the website completely match reality. The terrace is huge and was basically our favorite spot to hang out and eat. We shared it with two families which was totally okay. The view of the canal is really pretty and a great thing to see when you've just woken up.

View from our terrace

our rose-themed apartement

 

Peschiera Canal at night

However, we did leave the apartment to go and explore our surroundings.The weather was amazing - 30° C and more! Even shortly before sunset it was still warm enough to take a swim in the lake. Which is, by the way, just a short walk from the apartments. You walk along this small and pretty avenue right at the water front for 10-15 minutes to get to the next beach.

Avenue to the beach

Lago di Garda sunset

Our favorite activity, however, was shopping! Peschiera is pretty small but as it is quite touristy (but, as far as I heard, not as touristy as most towns along the Lake Garda) there's a multitude of cute shops. As we girls have a graduation ceremony coming up we looked for dresses. As you can imagine finding pretty Italian dresses wasn't hard. We came back home with about the double amount of clothes than when we got there.

successful Shopping

We also went to Verona for a day which is only about 25 km from Peschiera and famous for one of the most romantic couples of literary history: Romeo and Juliet. We saw the balcony at the Casa di Giulietta (Juliet's home) where supposedly Juliet and Romeo declared their love for each other. It is crowded with tourists, all the walls are full of doodles and scribbles from couples promising their love and hoping that Juliet will watch over their relationship. And everybody wanted to touch the right breast of the Juliet sculpture in the courtyard. Apparently it's supposed to bring good luck. I really liked all the little pad locks that couples have attached at one iron gate. But that was not the only place that I found couple's pad locks in Verona. At the Ponte delle Navi strings are spanned over the river and you can find a lot of interesting things on those strings like the mentioned pad locks but also socks or jewellery.

Juliet's balcony

Locks at the Casa di Giulietta

Lover's wishes

Locks at the Ponte delle Navi

And not to forget one of the most important parts of our little Italian journey: the food! As we had our own little apartement we didn't go out for meals every time. But even when preparing our own meals we really enjoyed the amazing Italian food (dried tomatos just taste better in Italy, same goes for coffee!). The best gelato we had was at  La Cremeria di Lazise in Via Rocca, Peschiera. The strawberry ice cream tastes like real strawberries and not artificially flavoured.
And of course, never forget to have a pizza and a Spritz!

self-prepared meals

Fruit ice in Verona