Sirmione

We went to Sirmione today, about 15 minutes drive West of our site, situated at the end of a long spit of land on the south shore of Lake Garda. 

It was very Italian. The old part starts as you walk over the drawbridge of the fort in to the town, and everywhere you turn is another lovely scene, all with the backdrop of the lake on three sides. At various places in the streets, there was a line on the road saying “The lake starts here” 20 to 50m from the current waters edge, where they have built out over the lake.

There were plenty of tourist shops, it being a very popular place, as well as cafes and more boutique style shops. Between 9.30am when we arrived and 11.30am when we left, it had become heaving with people so we were glad to get in and out early enough to miss the worst of it. Must be heaving at the height of the holidays. 

We drove back to camp long enough only to pickup some towels before we headed out again a few kilometres East to a dog beach. We rented beds and spent a lovely few hours swimming and chilling. Winnie disgraced herself again (after the duck chasing incident last night) by swimming after a swan for a couple of hundred metres. Just like the “Fenton” viral video, I had no control over her. The swan seemed to gaze upon Winnie with nothing greater than mild amusement as it kept a few metres in front of her. Eventually Winnie did realise the futility of her chase and turned round to head back to shore. She had the lead on for the rest of our time there. 

My lack of dog control was nothing compared to the woman with the two yappy little rats next to us. They barked at every dog, human and ghost for minutes at a time, while the woman tried and failed to shut them up. Pretty poor show even for a dog beach.