Riva del Garda

7:00 AM: DONG! - the town bell, not 50 feet from my window

wake up groggily

7:30 AM: crash, bang, crash, bang - construction from one house over

groan and roll over

7:50 AM: Faaaallalalalalla - Opera singers from my hostel
8:00 AM: DONG!

Reluctantly give up on sleep and get out of bed.

Pretty much to the minute this was my morning routine in the town of Riva del Garda. A little background on why I ended up in this sleep-depriving location - I was feeling a little burned out from the tourist trail that I had been following so I decided to try to take a bit of a detour from the usual route. I ended up choosing a lakeside town in Northern Italy as there was only a tiny blurb on it in my travel guide. Upon arriving I found out that I was successful in getting off the typical backpacker circuit - a little too successful as I didn´t meet another backpacker in my 3 days there. Unfortunately what I didn´t count on was that apparently this little town was a major destination for vacationing austrian families. It´s also a windsurfing and mountain biking hotspot so there was no lack of travellers when I was there. Oh and just to make things more interesting, about 90% of the people in my hostel were opera singers preparing for some big opera competition in town.

Arrrrrrghhh!

It wasn´t as bad as I make it out to be really - I had a very relaxing 3 days of laying on the beach, swimming, and reading. The town itself was in a gorgeous setting, and it had an interesting fusion of Austrian-Italian culture (this area only became a part of Italy following the first world war). And while it wasn´t my most social stop I did get to meet a couple of interesting locals and some guys from Northern Africa. However lesson learned - back to the beaten path for me!

Ciao,

Jon

Collectively the bane of sleeping-in

View of the lake - see it's not so bad afterall