Ciao (hello) Italia

 

Auf weidersein (goodbye) to Salzburg and Golly and Sonjas apartment.  Uncle Daniel (Golly) hired a big eight seater van, which only just fitted us all in.   

 We drove for about five hours without stopping and got to Riva del sol on the beautiful Lake Garda. The ice-cream in Italy is delicious.  I ordered, apple, strawberry and berry. 

 We swam in the lake which was warm, there was a net which we joked was for sharks but it was to keep the windsurfers away from the swimmers. We drove along a road which went through stone tunnels and was on one of the James Bond movies.
After being cooked in the hot van, we got to Bergamo and managed to find the train station even though the signs are in Italian. We met up with another cousin Kevin Prendergast.  He is a pilot and lives nearby so he showed us up to the old city which is thousands of years old.  We had pizza for dinner.  I like the NZ ones better as they don't do spagetti ones in Italy.  We also had big langostinis (prawn things) and we ate some of Sonjas mussels which were nice.    
It was late when we got to Gaimaica house - all our nights seemed to be late.
The house was made out of really nice stone and had marble tiles on the floor.
The food in italy was not my first choice apart from the icecream. The ham  (proscuito) looked really fake and was greasy.  The cheese was in everthing and was melting and overdone. One dish that looked really nice was a stew that Aunty Sonja ordered.  Granny was disgusted because it was made of donkey. The hot chocolates we ordered were stiff and were more like a chocolate pudding.  Not what we expected but Sonja had warned us.  I was really missing NZ ham, hot chocolates and vegemite.
We went to a great sports shop called Decathlon.  I tried out the scooters, then got granny and Estelle to have a go.
We met Kevin in Arona and he took us to Largo (lake) Maggiore where movie stars hang out.  We found a sort of a beach and went for a swim.  Estelle and I played on a mooring buoy.
The lake had a few castles and was a place where Napoleon stayed with his woman friend.