Welcome to 2023. The blog is coming up on its 11th birthday if you can believe it and while we continue to stumble through life in the Southern Europe of Germany we had a special event this year when we were fortunate enough to spend several days around Christmastime in the mountains around Lago di Garda in Northern Italy.
The adventure started about 10 days before Christmas when Sarah and Linda arrived to the coldest and snowiest Munich that has been seen in more than a decade. We had double digit negative temperatures in the nights but the cold would be short-lived as things started to heat up in the days approaching Weihnachten.
To keep traditions alive, on Sunday we drove to the Monastery at Irsee for a birthday/Christmas lunch with our friends. When we did the same last year at the height of the Omicron Wave we were alone in the restaurant but on this day the place was jumping with Christmas Cheer and we drank delicious monastery beer and (as is standard) average Bavarian cuisine.
After one last day of work on the Monday I began three weeks of holiday while the kids still had 3 more days of school. We used this time to compress all of our preparations and holiday enjoyment into 72 hours and bought presents, visited Christmas markets, ate Ramen, and (finally, after much deliberation) booked our Christmas getaway in the region of Tremosine. We bought bins full of food and drinks and of course a big turkey and prepared everything for a ~6 hour drive south.
On Friday morning(ish) we headed out as efficiently as we could and after a brief scare where Google Maps tried to route us around the entire lake due to a non-existent road closure that would have added 2 hours to the trip we arrived just minutes after darkness set in at our mountainside Italian villa.
The home we stayed in was quite beautiful and the views were amazing. We had mountains all around and a view down to the lake below. The nearby town was decorated with Christmas trees and lights and other decorations and we went for several walks through the town and on the trails in the surrounding mountains.
We were up late on Christmas Eve wrapping all the presents and preparing everything for the next day and on Christmas Day we did a family hike, opened lots of presents, had booze soup for lunch, and then a big turkey for dinner. On Boxing Day we (without the kids) did a trail run up to almost 1500 metres in the mountains and relaxed around the house. Before we went home we stopped right by the lake for a delicious lunch of local Italian products.
All in all I would highly recommend spending any time (even if it's not Christmas) in this location in Italy! And here's the same story told visually through 25 pictures (in opposite chronological oder that I was too lazy to reverse)... Enjoy!
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