Hey guys!
Here’s a report from another spontaneous trip, this time to Lake Garda, where I have never been before! It was a fast weekend trip, but I enjoyed it very much. I mainly enjoy the faces of people, when they ask me what I did on the weekend, and I tell them that I drove to Garda and Venice by car for two days, haha:) Insane, right?
Anyways, I got on the road on Friday afternoon and headed to Garda first. The original plan was one night at Garda, second night at Lake Sorapis and the third at Obersee. But the reality was totally different, but I’ll get to that later.
So, I got to Garda on Friday night. I stayed at Hotel Milan right on the shore of the lake. On Saturday it was about 350 degrees, so I spent a lot of time in my car, just driving around the lake and stopped & got out of the car at just two places. The lake doesn’t look like a lake at all actually, it’s like a bay of the Mediterranean sea, that’s how huge it is! In the afternoon, I got going to the Dolomites to cool off a bit. But here comes the fun.
I forgot to turn to the South Dolomites and accidentally arrived in Venice, where I didn’t want to go at all. It wasn’t that much of a detour, but I lost two hours. When I was already there, I stayed for a late lunch and then I decided to stay overnight, because I wouldn’t make it to the lake before it gets dark, which I didn’t feel like doing after the midnight hike to Bachalpsee in Switzerland. I booked a hotel and in the evening I went just for a short walk along the Grand Canal.
I was in Venice in October last year, but I went to downtown in the morning after breakfast. I did just St. Mark’s Square and then I had to run back because there were so many people plus it was getting superhot again. My sweaty moustache and back started to be very irritating.
In the afternoon, I left Venice and drove to the town of Cortina d’Ampezzo, where I started off the hike to Lake Sorapis. Of course, all the internet in my phone had been used, so I had to rely on Google Maps that I had set in Venice. There was no sign, so I wasn’t quite sure where to go. I asked in one of the hotels with my brilliant fluent Italian to make sure I was going in the right direction. The funny thing is, that this lake is not famous at all (and I don’t know why, because it’s stunning!), so the first lady was like: “naaaah, there is no such a lake, you must have been mistaken.” I was quite sure it had to be somewhere there, so I asked another guy and finally he knew, so I set off.
The trek up to the lake took me about two hours, but it was still hot, so I was climbing really slowly. At about 7pm, I finally got to the beauty, sweaty, smelly and tired. Thank God no one was up there, I guess because it was a bit too late and also a thunderstorm was coming, which I knew, but didn’t want to skip this hike anyways.
I shot some photos, but I didn’t take many, because it was getting dark really fast. I took advantage of the fact that nobody was there and took a bath in milky turquoise water to smell a little less. Then I pitched the tent, had my “dinner” and got into my sleeping bag.
But at night the huge thunderstorm hit me, and it was so strong, that I thought I was going to fly off. The lightening was flashing every three seconds and thunder was hitting into the rocks above me. The rain was so strong, that there were drops dripping from the top of the tent in the morning.
Well, the original plan was to leave the lake at 6 am, quickly get down to the car and hit the road to Prague, where I was supposed to be at 4 pm. But the rain didn’t let me out of the tent before 11 am, so it could have been slightly after noon, when I was leaving Italy. It was pretty clear to me, that I could never be in Prague by 4 pm, so I had to cancel all my trainings.
I had about 8 hours of driving, but the apocalypse continued on the highway, where it wasn’t possible to drive faster than 90 km/h. But when I got to Munich, my I knew I screwed up totally. I got stuck in a traffic jam for several hours and I made it home at midnight. I was 8 hours late for work. Well, next time I won’t do such a thing again, hihi 🙂
Anyways, it was a great cleansing roadtrip! I love these kinds of weekends 🙂 And what about you guys, how did you spend your weekend? 🙂
E.