Italy Day 10, Brenzone sul Garda: Netflix and Naps

Thursday, October 3

Brenzone sul Garda, Verona, Veneto

Highlight: Dinner with our Russian hosts and other guests

Lowlight: Pouring rain all day

This may be the sorriest excuse for a blog post ever for a day that we never, ever need to remember.

I awoke many times in the night in our walk-out suite on Lake Garda. Each time I awoke, I heard the sound of rain splattering down just outside our room. It rained all during the night, at times heavily, nearly 38mm rain overnight, an inch and a half. 

Once it got light, I could see the shrubs and trees outside bending to my left, windy squalls howling the length of the lake from the north. When the fog parted enough to see out onto the lake, I could see sizeable whitecaps.

Realizing that the day would be a total loss and after scanning the headlines for a while, I proceeded to roll over and snooze for a couple hours. I really needed it.

Imagine That You Can See it Pouring Rain

I woke once again at 10:30 to see the lake outside our window largely socked in. The peaks across the lake in Brescia were not visible but I could see a bunch of kitesurfers skimming across the lake in the high wind. Lake Garda is a haven for kitesurfers because the narrow gorge surrounding the lake funnels the wind consistently in a manner that reminds me of Hood River and the Columbia River Gorge.

It rained steadily and miserably enough that I was glad we had a nice room to hole up in for the day. At some point, I got up out of bed and made a small lunch of cheese and salame sandwiches from leftovers from dinner. The afternoon was given over to Netflix and naps.

Our hosts were a group of Russians who own several properties in the village and more down on the lake front. Each night, they cook a large meal and serve it at their principal residence to any guests who would like to partake, for a small fee. We thought it would be a fun way to meet other travelers and avoid the hassle of trying to find a restaurant that was open, not to mention getting there in the pouring rain.

At 7:30, in a light rain, we walked a hundred meters or so up the hill to the main house and were promptly welcomed to the table. I would guess that there were about 10 others at the table, mainly, possibly all, Russian. I got a chance to trot out the 25 phrases that I know in Russian but other than that, direct communication was tough, though I think everyone was happy enough that I greeted them in Russian. Anastasia was there and helped with the translations. It seemed that nobody at the table spoke any Italian. I even tried some French hoping that some of the Russians learned French in school. No dice.

At our end of the table, we chatted with a young couple who now live in Beyreuth, Germany and who travel all over. Their English skills were decent and between that, some German, and a little Russian, we had a pleasant enough chat. They showed us some beautiful photos of their recent beach vacation in Sardinia. 

Dinner was bountiful and really pretty good: a couple of salads (caprese and a chopped salad), roasted vegetables, salame, a cheese platter, roasted chicken wings with a soy glaze, a basket of rye bread, and a couple of other things that I do not remember. The highlight of the meal was a закуска (zakuska), a small hors d'oeuvre of chopped fish (let's call it herring) with raw onions on rounds of rye bread.

Dinner Spread in Brenzone

Dinner was the only saving grace in an incredibly dull day on Lake Garda, where we will not remember our time fondly. We headed to bed somewhat early hoping for better weather tomorrow as we moved north into Trentino and then Alto Adige to stay near the Austrian border.