Sirmione

Yesterday Verona, today Sirmione which I’d never heard of before but it was a brilliant surprise, and tomorrow Venice.

We were sitting on the balcony discussing what to do, and when I heard the phrase “Roman ruins” I said that’s where we’ve got to go, more because I wanted Sam to see a bit of ancient history while we’re here in Italy, expose him to  the history bug.

The Castle at Sirmione

In the end, we sent Sam and Isabel in with the other adults because we were running out of time on parking, drove back, parked closer, and met up, so I never got to see the ruins but we had a great walk along the lake, saw the castle from the outside which I generally think  is the best way to  see a castle, and it  had a moat around it with swans and huge carp, actually it was a castle plus a walled town around it, a bit like Prague Castle except way more commercial, a bit like Dubrovnik without the cliffs, and we stopped for Italian ice cream twice, which kept the kids real happy.

The whole experience of the last two days has reminded me that we are the inheritors of several millenia of human history, the last two of which have significantly marked the landscape so that everywhere you go there are interesting things to see, old castles, cathedrals (we stopped in one in Verona yesterday, really, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, but because of the thick walls and the cavernous internal space, they  are always the coolest place in a hot, sweaty Italian tourist trap.), monuments, fountains, and so much more.  Also, everywhere you go in  the world, there are spots of natural beauty, lakes, mountains, beaches, forests…

It’s a beautiful world but, damn, the traffic is terrible..