Gardone Riviera

Taking advantage of this fantastic weather, we cycled the short way to the ferry at Garda and caught the boat across the lake to Gardone Riviera, calling at Portese and Salo on the way.  All so beautiful.  We met some Americans between Salo and Gardone who were spending most of the day travelling over the lake and we were able to confirm that Malcesine and Riva were well worth spending time at.  Gardone was very quiet when we arrived so no problem finding somewhere to have lunch.

Our cruise ship

Salo

Salo

Then we climbed the hill to Il Vitoriale degli Italiani, the former home of the poet and nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio.  He was a very eccentric egotist and the house has been left as it was when he died in 1938 - each gloomy bizarre room filled with strange artifacts from Buddhas and toy animals in the bathroom to a machine gun in one of the libraries. On the table in the dining room, as a warning to greedy guests, is a huge gilded turtle with the shell of a real one that had died of overeating!  On one wall were written the 5 Deadly Sins - he left out Lust and Greed - that says it all really!  The gardens are built into the steep hillside and include an amphitheatre, museums, an enormous mausoleum (with fantastic views) and the prow of the battleship Puglia sticking out between the trees.  So it was a very odd place to visit, but fascinating all the same.

A pretty corner of Gardone Riviere

The Prioria

View from the mausoleum

Battleship Puglia

The prow of the Puglia

With time to kill back down at the waterfront, we whiled it away with a gelato at one of the cafes, then relaxed on the ferry trip back home.