Bella Italia

Day 14 - August 12

Well, Verona is a city which I have visited earlier, but it does not hurt to do a refresher, does it? But this was not before having a breakfast at the house of my host - very Italian, pastries, croissant and lots of coffee. We chatted for a while in broken English and then I headed to the town, where, needles to say, I visited Julia's house.

Soon I was riding again, this time in a westerly direction, towards the Garda Lake. I was really glad to have taken the train from Venice earlier, as the landscape was anything but exciting, a long stretch of a straight road, with quite heavy traffic. This got even heavier when getting near the lake, and mile-long traffic jams formed, I guess the cars were stuck for at least half an hour before reaching a roundabout, only to have to wait patiently (or not...) at the next one. Anyhow, on a bike there are no traffic jams, so I reached the town of Peschira on the southeast edge of the lake - which was really pretty, but extremely touristy - felt like in a sort of Disneyland.

I was not amused by the large crowds, so I continued on the south shore of the lake and despite the rather grey weather (it even rained for a while), went in for a swim. Quite different than the Istrian beaches! You could hardly see the Alps towards the north, they were about to hide in the clouds.

I purchased some food at a store and managed to find a large tent, set up for some concert or show, where I had my lunch - this stopped me from getting wet, and by the time I had finished eating, the rain stopped - time to move on. Due to the gloomy weather, there were not too many people on the shore, so for a while, I rode on the pedestrian path right next to the lake, where biking is not allowed, but no one seemed to care or if they did, I did not notice (and I could not have cared less…). I made to the southwestern edge of the lake, to another pretty town, with somewhat less tourists, called Desenzano.

Here I turned south, on a road labelled SP343. About an hour into the riding, I saw a large tent selling vegetables and fruits, thought it would be worthwhile buying some of the latter. To my surprise, the lady spoke fair English and I explained a watermelon would be great, but I only wanted a slice. She pointed to a chair at a table and brought a wonderful slice of watermelon - right from the fridge! It was delicious. She also had a cooled cantaloupe - yummy! She then showed a picture of her son - he was touring Italy with his packed bike, similar to me, somewhere in the south.

Well, the road itself was not the ever most exciting one I've ever seen, but I was well compensated by the towns located along it. Each town had a pretty main square, a nice church and some impressive buildings - after all, we are in the renaissance Italy.

A bit of detail for history fans: a town along the way, called Asola, was unsuccessfully besieged by the Austrian emperor Maximilian I in 1516. There is a painting from the Renaissance master Tintoretto about this battle.

It was not an area with heavy tourism, I was a bit worried whether I would find some accommodation to sleep. Well, no luck - outside the small towns, there were huge agricultural fields and I managed to hide and set up my tent a few hundred yards away from the road.

During the night, there were some animals close to me, I explained to myself these are probably just birds or some cats - I did not fancy meeting a boar or something larger. BTW, the sunset was rather pretty.

Here is the map of the day, it was just above 100 km, with just about 300 meters of altitude gain.