Location Location Location - Traveling in Italy's Alpine Lakes

In an effort to broaden our knowledge base for our itinerary planning service, we recently took a 12-day jaunt up north into Italy’s northern regions of Lombardy and Piemonte - with a couple of stops in Emilia-Romagna on the way. Here’s a roundup of some of the special and extraordinary places where we stayed and ate. Although our Alpine Lakes guide is the slimmest volume of our guidebooks, these lakes are chock full of natural beauty and deep history. And now we have even more information to share with our travelers!

One out-of-the-box experience was an exploration of Sirmione. This little town, built on a narrow peninsula on Lake Garda, starts with a medieval castle and a drawbridge gate, and ends with the ruins of an extensive Roman villa. It’s unusual for us because this is also a HUGE tourist spot – the small space means a very high density of tourists per square meter. For this reason we chose to take a hotel way out on the peninsula, rather than park outside and walk in. This meant driving across the castle’s drawbridge and through an extremely narrow street clogged with visitors on foot. The result was a secluded paradise for our exploration and our overnight stay, including a balcony in an olive grove overlooking the lake… but getting there was not easy.

(This is part of what we do for our clients – we work out ahead of time how to manage a destination, so we can advise with first-hand experience!)

That was just one of a number of unique lodging experiences on this trip. All together, these lodgings averaged €142 per night, with a high of €209 (an entire apartment with a patio overlooking a neighboring castle and a private yard ending at the lake’s edge) and a low of €118 (a hotel room with a balcony over the marina of a bustling lakeside town).

Some of the others: A room with a patio high above a lake, at a restaurant specializing in pizza; an apartment with a jacuzzi and a private garden; a room in a renovated medieval barn structure attached to a moated castle; and an apartment above a restaurant run by a family that owns a milk farm, thus specializing in tantalizingly tasty cheese and cream-based dishes.

Speaking of which: As always, our travels always include excellent eating as well as unique lodging! Below are a few images of some of the places we visited, the interesting sights we took in, the food we enjoyed, and the unusual experiences we had in these beautiful lakes regions. We can plan a trip like this for you!