Magic in Italy: Lake Idro

Trip Report Index:

Introduction
Getting There
Hotel Review: St. Regis Rome
Hotel Review: Hotel De Russie
Visiting Rome
Hotel Review: The Westin Europa & Regina
Visiting Venice
Hotel Review: St. Regis Venice San Clemente Palace (previously reviewed)
Driving around Lake Garda
Hotel Review: Hotel Sirmione
Day in Sirmione
Hotel Review: Hotel Ideal
Night in Verona
Lake Idro
Lake Iseo
Lake Maggiore
Hotel Review: Sheraton Milan
Retrospect

This part of the trip I could have renamed as “What NOT to do when on a trip”. But I’ll start at the beginning. For a day trip from Sirmione, I wanted to see one of the other lakes in the area. I looked at a map and saw that there was a large lake just to the left of Lake Garda called Lake Iseo. Looking online at information about the town right on the lake, Wikipedia said there were “several medieval towns around the lake, filled with bars, shops, cafe’s and hotels”. It sure looked like a fun place to go for a day so during breakfast my husband and I decided to do a quick road trip.

I entered Lake Idro into GoogleMaps, we got on the road pretty early, and enjoyed beautiful views as we sped along the road by Lake Garda. It was a good day for a drive, with sunny skies on a quiet weekday. Once we got to the lake we’d walk along the water, find a good restaurant to eat lunch at that had a good view, and see about some shops.

There were old churches, quaint towns and traffic was light.

We stopped at a convenience store to grab a quick snack, and found that there were whole aisles with chips and crackers.

Driving along there was a lot to look at.

We passed small towns in the hills.

The road twisted and turned, and around each bend there were more hills.

It was quite a large lake on the map, so we figured we’d see it very soon.

Finally, we crested the top of a hill and looked down. Barely a trickle flowed in the lakebed below.

We were puzzled, but then saw the dam just ahead. Figuring that the water was just on the other side, we hurried on.

We entered the next village and set about finding the lake.  The town was decorated in the colors of the Italian Flag – green, white and red.

All of a sudden we came to the lake. No fanfare, just a quiet sloping into the water.

There were some boats about, but almost no people. The lake didn’t look anything like we’d expected, so we took a careful look at the map.

We realized that we’d come to the wrong lake! Lake Idro and Lake Iseo are next to each other, but instead of going to the much larger Lake Iseo we’d ended up at the barely six-mile long Lake Idro. Beautiful in it’s own right, we hadn’t gotten to our original destination. Idro, Iseo…very similar really.

It was still early in the day so we decided to reroute and continue on to Lake Iseo.

Leaving Idro, I decided that double-checking the map would have been a good idea!