Day 205: Brescia & Peschiera del Garda

Off on the road around 9:30am, heading eastwards along the freeway. First stop today was the town of Brescia, where we visited a World Heritage site that was part of the Longobards of Italy listing. This one was an old church from the 8th century, but situated in the middle of a larger monastery and sitting atop Roman ruins.

After a bit of parking difficulty (Italian cities are insane for this), we managed to find somewhere and head to the museum. It was quite well done, though a lot of it related to the history of Brescia rather than to the WH site. In particular we both found the Roman floor mosaics to be fascinating, as they're just so intricate and beautiful to look at - and very lifelike sometimes too! Crazy to think they'd been buried under a monastery for nearly 1500 years.

In the end, the actual basilica on the WH list was a little underwhelming. The frescoes and decoration aren't that visible, and to access it you have to pass through a 15th century Baroque nunnery choir which is absolutely spectacular, so following that with a barely-decorated hulking ruin almost feels a little bit of a let-down. The Longobard sites definitely haven't been my favourite, that's for sure.

Had a nice lunch at a semi-fancy place on the main square in town, where since it's not a tourist area the prices were quite reasonable. Shandos had a caprese salad (mostly tomato and buffalo mozzarella), while I had a pizza of course.

Back to the car where we drove eastwards again, heading towards our ultimate destination for the day - Verona. On the way we impulse-decided to stop at Peschiera del Garda, a small tourist town on the southern shore of Lake Garda. It's apparently a hugely popular area for Italians and Germans in particular on summer holidays, to basically come and spend some time at the lake. It was certainly very crowded, reminded me of Windemere in England or perhaps Nelson Bay during summer.

Managed to find a park and briefly had a look at the world heritage listing here - another of the Venetian works of defence. This was basically an island fortress guarding the mouth of the Adige river. It flows from the lake through Verona, south-east into the Po river before eventually emptying into the Adriatic, so manning the barricades here was quite important as a bulwark against central European powers.

The fortifications weren't quite as interesting as the ones in Bergamo, certainly not as dramatic, and we didn't spend long here investigating. There's apparently not that much of the Venetian period left anyway, since it was conquered by Napoleon and later by Austrians, both of whom imposed their own styles and requirements on the fort. So after a little filming we succumbed to our tourist urges, bought a gelato and sat on the waterfront before driving away.

Arrived in Verona late in the afternoon, where we visited a supermarket to stock up since we'll be here for a few nights. Our apartment is a large single-bedroom house, part of a duplex where the owners live in the other house. Fairly modern, though we're about 15 minutes drive out of town and definitely in the suburbs. A big thunderstorm rolled over just before dinner with rather unsettled Schnitzel, but otherwise not much to report!Read more