What a day! We thought yesterday was amazing. Today really took the cake. In Montavo we checked out of the hotel and found parking on the other side of the city nearer to their historic sites. Still, we had to walk a couple of miles through the quaint but narrow cobblestone streets to get to the Castello di San Georgio and the Palazzo Ducalle. These were incredibly impressive medieval residences filled with authentic Renaissance art.

Courtyard of Castello di San Giorgio

One of the exquisite halls in the Castle

After a couple of hours we dragged our already tired feet to a cafe for lunch. We pulled out the smart phone and searched for “Roman Ruins,” and up came the peninsula of Sirmione which sports not only the medieval castle of Castello Scaligero but also the ancient Roman villa of Grotte di Catullo. This is the biggest and best preserved Roman Ruin in Northern Italy. It’s difficult to imaging how huge and impressive this place was, and of course all built by hand stone by stone. I’ll let some pictures to the talking for me…

Roman Grotto ruins

More Grotto ruins

And still more!

After dinner in front of the castle…

Gary’s view at dinner in Sirmione

we decided to stay on this peninsula for the night, and managed to get a reasonable hotel right in the heart of the most charming and beautiful place we’ve seen so far. Our hotel has a rooftop terrace that looks directly out onto part of the Castle, lake Garda, and a snow-capped mountain in the background.

The view from our hotel terrace

Tomorrow, we’ll spend the day drinking in this incredible place and visiting the castle. So far the language hasn’t been much of a barrier. We did run into one Italian tourist who seemed to think I was one of the castle guides, and who got really peeved with me when I responded, “Non capsisco. Parle Englese? Mi dispiaci, non capisco” to his rapid Italian question. He just glared at me! With each passing day, though, we’re getting just a little bit more competent with the language.