Day 1
We landed in Milan’s airport and then we took the train to Desenzano in Garda Lake. At first it was a bit hard to figure out how to buy the train tickets and where do we take our train because there was a huge line for the ticket office. Anyone we asked didn’t speak any English at the train station. I recommend learning some basic words in Italian like ‘train’, ‘ticket’ etc.
On the first 5 nights we stayed at a small lovely hotel at Desenzano called “Hotel City“. The price was ok and the location was wonderful, 5 minutes’ walk to the Garda Lake. On the next few days we visited some towns around Garda Lake using the ferry.
We took the ferry from Desenzano to Sirmione, a nice small town.
Day 2
We took the train from Desenzano to Verona. Verona is lovely. We walked around the beautiful streets, visited Juliette’s balcony, and went to ‘Giardini Giusti‘ which is a small garden. We were quite disappointed; it doesn’t worth the walk and the 5 euro entry fee, just a regular park.
At noon we came back to Desenzano, very hungry and ready to eat lunch. We then realized that Italians have a ‘siesta‘ and almost no one works from 14:00 to 18:00 and all the restaurants are close! So we ate an ice cream and waited till shops started to open again. We had a wonderful dinner at “La Terrazze” restaurant (the address is via t.dal molin 47). It’s worth to ask some locals were the restaurant is, the food was really good.
Day 3
This whole day was dedicated to the amusement park “Gardaland“. We took the train to Peschiera, and then the free shuttle to Gardaland. This amusement park is full of charm and we had lots of fun! There’s an impressive dolphin show inside and it was beautiful. In the evening we tried seafood restaurant and the food was horrible, so we decided to stick with pasta and pizza for the rest of our trip.(=
Day 4
We took the ferry to Malcesine, a lovely town. We took the cable car to Monte Baldo Mountain and walked in a beautiful path up there. The views are wonderful and the air is fresh and cool. In the evening we had another delicious meal at ‘La Terrazze’.
Day 5
We took the long 5 hours ferry to Riva Del Garda to see ‘Cascata Del Varone‘. Again we felt a bit disappointed, the waterfalls weren’t so impressive, it felt more like a botanical garden and it’s not worth taking the long ferry all the way to Riva just to see ‘Cascata Del Varone’. We felt like we had enough of Garda Lake’s towns.