We had seen Sirmione at midnight, exhausted and dragging luggage. Now we were seeing it properly. It was even better.
Breakfast at Alexandra Stay Sirmione was everything it should have been — traditional, plentiful, the kind that sets you up for a full day on your feet. Afterwards, back in the room, we opened the limoncello we had bought from a shop in the old town the night before. It sat on the table in its Lago di Garda and Sirmione shot glasses, clearly already planning its journey home in someone’s luggage. We left it there. The lake was waiting.
We had arrived at that particular moment in the Italian calendar that falls between Easter and the summer season — the window when the foreign visitors have mostly gone and the Italians themselves come out. Sirmione in early May belongs to Italy. The crowds were large, warm, and entirely at home. Families with small children, groups of friends, couples moving slowly along the waterfront. Nobody rushing. Nobody performing for anyone else. Just people genuinely pleased to be exactly where they were.
The peninsula is narrow enough that you are never far from water. Walking north from the hotel, the lake appeared on both sides almost immediately — sailboats moored in the small harbour, flower boxes spilling pink and white petunias over the walls, the turquoise water of Lake Garda stretching away toward the mountains.
The Piazza Carducci was already full — colourful buildings in yellow, pink and blue framing the square, café umbrellas out, Italian voices carrying across the stone. This was not a tourist town performing for visitors. This was a place that Italians love, and on this particular weekend in May, they had arrived to prove it.
The castello by day is a different proposition entirely from the night before. We had seen it dramatic and theatrical, floodlit against black sky. In daylight it is simply massive — medieval stone rising directly from the lake, the Venetian lion watching from above the gate, the crowds below it entirely undaunted by its eight hundred years of history. Everyone wanted a photo. We were no different.
The streets of the old town were narrow and busy in equal measure — the ancient stonework more detailed in daylight than we had noticed at midnight, the little church with its decorative spires easy to miss if you were looking at the castle instead. Italian families filled the lanes, grandparents keeping pace with grandchildren, everyone seemingly knowing exactly where the best gelato was.
Inside the moat, a boat was making its slow way through the castle water gate — the kind of image that makes you stop walking and just stand there.
Before lunch we found aperitivo — mosaic-tiled tables in the old town, cocktails, olives, crisps, that particular Italian mid-afternoon energy that makes everything feel unhurried and correct. Sarah had the look of someone who had fully accepted what Italy does to a schedule and made peace with it.
The park on the eastern shore was quieter — grass running down to the water’s edge, reeds in the shallows, a wooden jetty reaching out into the lake. A few couples walked the path at the water’s edge. Here the May crowds thinned, and Sirmione gave you a moment to just look at the lake.
Then the speedboat.
We had booked a lake tour — a shared boat out onto Lake Garda and along the shoreline. The boarding pontoon was busy, the mood good, the driver in his white cap looking entirely unconcerned by the number of people trying to find somewhere to sit. Next to us on the water, a magnificent vintage wooden speedboat called “I am The Best” pulled away from the dock with exactly the confidence the name suggested. On Lake Garda, in May, surrounded by Italians entirely in their element, that boat absolutely earns it.
Out on the water, Sirmione recedes slowly behind you — the castello towers visible long after the town has gone. The lake is vast from the middle of it. Mountains on every horizon. The water a deep, cool green. We had arrived by train and bus and our own two feet. This was the one exception to the rule, and it was worth every second.
We finished with gelato in the park — one enormous cone, the palm trees overhead, the lake just visible through the trees. Sarah made a face at the camera that requires no further explanation.
3.25 miles. 7,784 steps. One boat ride. Sirmione in its Italian moment, before the summer arrived to claim it back.
Tomorrow, Pescia, and Gardaland for James’ Birthday Thrills.