Lago di Garda

Tuesday, August 24th

Kathleen and I hopped in Betty to head off to Lago di Garda, a massive lake an hour and a bit west of Padova. Kathleen hadn’t ridden in my vehicle yet and got the whole experience, the top speed of 130 km/hr on the autoroute and getting to push her at a gas station to get her going...yes, she earned a Betty Badge!

Lago di Garda:

We weren’t entirely sure what the afternoon would entail. I had heard of this activity of “via ferrata” from Garth which is likely rock climbing but a bit easier. You wear a harnesss but there are already cables and some wooden platforms, etc. to help you along. Kathleen for sure wanted to go for a dip in the lake and there are some places to paraglide around the lake but we weren’t sure where any of these activities were (although the swimming was pretty easy to find). We ended up stopping near a castle for lunch and after consulting a tourist info place, opted to just head to a nice beach for the afternoon. Between some swims, napping and a few fun games of chess, it suddenly was after 6pm and we needed to get on the road to meet up with Mary, Sue and Domenico for dinner in Verona. Everyone, except me, was heading to the opera in a 2000 year old amphitheatre. I decided that although I enjoy a good opera (actually, I’ve never been to an opera and it really doesn’t interest me), I needed to get a few hours of driving under my belt. I was heading all the way across France to meet up with my cousin Gemma, her husband Charles and some of his family and I hoped to get there by tomorrow evening and it was a 12 hour drive according to a website (which is probably closer to 14 hours in Betty!).

The amphitheatre in Verona:

I ended up getting in a groove with the driving. I passed Milano and had hoped to at least get past Torino but kept going and going, until almost 3am and was into France, close to Chambery. I was a bit blown away by one of the last tolls I had to pay; 45 Euros for about 15-20 minutes drive through a tunnel from Italy to France...yikes! I pulled into an “Aires de Service” and put my head down for about 4 hours of sleep before getting back on the road.

Thanks so much to Mary for being a lovely host and to Domenico for being the local tour guide...it was a fabulous time!