Sirmione

After departing Verona we took a long and intermittently scenic drive to the largest lake in Italy, Lake Garda. We were in search of a fortress castle located on a long peninsula, knowing only that it was marked "interesting" on our map. When we finally arrived, we found that every single vacationing Italian in the entire country was somehow packed onto this thin strip of land. I know my Michigan references have been a bit out of hand recently, but it really reminded me of Mackinac Island sans boyscouts.


Taking away from the castle's interestingness were the facts that it was small and closed. However, whereas most moats grow grass or house bears nowadays, this one actually had water in it, as it connected to the lake on the other side. Bonus points for being completely surrounded by water. If you could ignore the jillions of people filtering through this area, you could almost imagine Legolas in a huge floating leaf leading a stealth attack of the castle. (My Tolkien nostalgia is so easy to trigger on vacation.) Anyway, it would take someone really heroic to conquer this outpost. If anyone actually wanted to conquer this outpost.