Lake Garda- Peschiera-Lazise-Sirmione

Today is epic and filled with classic travel stories. So hold on tight before reading on.

We leave Mari's awful place (another story on its own) with plans to take a bus to Lake Garda after I drop my luggage at the new Air B&B. When I reach back to the central bus station, the scene is epic: I see Susanna is running towards a bus that is about to close its door, so I start running towards it too. Two Asian girls are running diagonally to a bus that is leaving the bus stop, yelling out "Wait! Wait!" is quite a scene. The bus leaves one minute earlier than schedule which we would have not anticipated. Italian public transport is always late. This Italian staff at the platform is trying to tell us that the next one will be in an hour ... "[why do you look so upset] What is your problem? It is only an hour." Mama Mia Italian - time is not important.

This are a few things we have learnt about Italian in this trip, these are: timetable is for reference, don't use it as the German does. Italian speaks bad English, has terrible attitude, super unhelpful and very lazy. Why work hard when enough is good enough? Compared to the Spanish, who are passionate people. They may tell you something that is wrong, but that is purely out of a good heart. (Like Erika is giving me all these tips about interviewing with the Italian although Malta is not even in Italy).

We eventually take another bus to Lazise, a beautiful town that right by the lake. We love the small town center and buy a few cheeses and a genuine Italian made leather belt for my loosen pants. We then take a scenic ferry ride back to Peschiera, the main town of Lake Garda. We have about an hour to kill before the next ferry to Sirmione.

Shamelessly, I go into a cafe and ask for two smallest plastic coffee cups they have. Although the waitress looks suspiciously at me, she gives me the two cups. We layout the Cathay Pacific blanket (which we used previously as a beach tower in Monterosso), put out our expensive Cinque Terre wine, cheese, prosciutto, tomatoes, and start enjoying our picnic against the beautiful blue lake and alps.

The next stop is Sirmione, a 45min ferry ride. We walk along the pleasant foreshore and soaking in the sun that we did not have from the last three days!

Mari's place
One of the worst air b&b place I have stay in. The host wants to charge us for luggage deposit and late check out. The bathroom is dungeon that I don't really want to go in, bed linens are worn out and a pillow that is stuffed with two cushions. Here are the laundry list of the place:

My friend and I stayed at Mari's place in Verona for two nights. The location of the flat is very convenient with walking distance to central station and supermarket. However, the flat itself has many flaws:

- The wifi is so slow that I can not even load the website to purchase train tickets online.
- The towers provided are worn out and one of them has weird smell.
- There are only two pillows in the room. When I asked for an extra pillow, the host gave me two cushions stuffed into a worn out pillow case and claimed she could not find other pillows.
- The electrical kettle in the room is very dirty with white sediment that seems like it has been there for a very long time. We boiled the water twice with lemon and managed to get rid of some of the sediment.
- There are only two transparent lace curtain in the room, no blackout curtain. We recommend future guests to bring their own eye masks if they don't want to be woken up by the sun at 6am.
- I know it is a small thing, but there is no rubbish bin in the room and the heater in the room does not work either.
- We are asked to pay extra 10 euros for depositing our luggage in the flat on the day of our check-out, which is more expensive than what the station luggage deposit service would charge. The check-out time is rigid at 10am and the host claims every delay will cost us 15 euros per hour.

As a superhost myself, I understand Mari runs her place like a business but she definitely takes the essence out of being a friendly and helpful host on Air B&BRead more