But then we got there. Gargnano is a tiny port village hiding in plain sight on the shores of Lake Garda and operates as, well very little if truth be told, and that is precisely the way I liked it. We arrived at the house (a two bedroom flat sandwiched between two family homes with the grandparents upstairs and the daughter/granddaughter downstairs. Lovely people.) unpacked and were immediately ordered (by the aforementioned grandmother) to leave and go into the village. This was apparently because we had almost missed the most important event of the year: the lemon festival. Not wanting to cause offence, we dutifully trooped off down the mountain to the village to see what the fuss was about.
Lemons, it seems, come in more shapes and sizes than I had ever imagined or actually wanted to imagine. Some (the ones with fingers more precisely) will probably haunt my dreams for years to come. But if you look closely at the picture, you'll see The Child pointing at one lemon in particular.
This mutant beast was the size of a melon. A lemon melon if you will. Yeah, I know.
Anyway, by this time we were all settling into the Italian way of things and so stopped for an aperitif by the wharf, at the same bar that proudly proclaimed that DH Lawrence was also a guest, no less. I can believe it because once you start drinking with a view like this, you will believe just about anything:
For the next couple of evenings we sat and drank more aperitifs, ate more gelato and basically remembered we were on holiday. There were a few restaurants open but we were directed to an alleyway in between a bike shop and a drain, Restorante Al Vicolo was deserted but we knew the secret of Italian dining by now and plonked ourselves down anyway.
We started with fondue - perhaps not quite an Italian staple, but this close to the Swiss border, we figured it would be OK and as such it proved to be. The Children eagerly dipped bread and pretty much anything else they could fit on their forks into a cauldron of melty cheese, while Mrs P and I enjoyed some octopus salad. This was followed by pasta piled on top of a massive block of some kind of cheese rind, spaghetti with sausage and frozen gnocchi. A quick note on frozen gnocchi: it was cooked, then served with some kind of cheesy ice-cream with a chocolate stripe. Super weird, but I'm glad I tried it and looking back, I can see this was quite a cheese-heavy meal.
I have to say that the sausage spaghetti was right up there with one of the best dishes of the trip. Beautifully made pasta coupled with local, rough sausage with a dash of butter. Lovely.
The next day we made it up Monte Baldo and saw this:
Then we ate this:
At Baita Dei Forti. Homemade pasta with cheese (more cheese), beef ragu and a garlic and oil variant. All were, (considering the fact that everyone knows that food at any geographic tourist attraction is universally rubbish), actually really nice and not over priced. The spaghetti was all home-made, we were proudly informed, and the sauces were not bad at all. Well done them.
Then, for our last night we decided to go back for some pizza at Restorante Pizzeria.
Ham and rocket, prawns and courgette, salami, all proved both thin, crispy and enormous. So much so that we took the leftovers home and enjoyed them a second time around. Not quite up to our first nights standard but still a wonderfully tasty example of amazing pizza with excellent sourdough bases.
So that, ladies and gentlemen is a round up of our Italian adventure. We ate loads, drank more and generally had a fantastic time. There were ups and downs as well as a few other directions but all in all we came home feeling more tired than when we left. Mrs P and I will certainly be going back to Venice again, maybe some of the others too, just perhaps without the kids.
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