Lake Garda

At one time or another we've all entertained ideas about a place we want to visit and what it might be like if we ever get there.  (I'm not the only one who's done this, right?)
I try to keep my expectations realistic.  For example, I don't think that when and if I ever get the chance to visit Egypt that I will do so while wearing a white linen gallibaya and traveling by camel hump as music from Laurence of Arabia fills the air.
Or should I ever walk the Scottish Highlands I am certain I will not cross paths with a kilt-wearing 18th century time-traveler to whom I was married in another dimension.
Yeah, I'm not twelve.
But there are less pre-teen-fantasy things to hope for.  Specific vignettes or events that just epitomize a place: Liberty Bridge in Budapest, a pastry shop in Vienna, the Field Museum in Chicago, diving into the Mediterranean in Spain.  Even before you go you've got these little ideas in your head, right?  When at last you see or experience it you say "This is what X place means to me.  Perfect." and then you breathe a sigh of relief that you weren't utterly unrealistic and tweeny-ish in your daydreams.

So we're still in Italy (at least in this blog we are and the fat roll around my middle doesn't yet understand that I am back home and exercising daily) and having a great time.  I have no complaints and everything is lovely and joyful.
And we're making our way slowly but surely back north on our meandering way back home.
On the agenda is a visit to Lake Garda so that we won't have to hear my father say "Sure is a shame you didn't make it there" every time we see him for the next decade (he lives around the corner from us so that would be a lot of times).  As usual we've got the address of a restaurant and as usual it takes us on a very long, winding road outside of the main vein of anywhere.
When we pull up the place looks worrisomely like someone's house and although there is a little sign tacked out front it reminds me so much of a real estate plaque in the States that I'm still not reassured until Mihai jogs down the steps and comes back with a 'thumbs up'.
Oh, but it is a house.  The husband and wife just also run a restaurant out of it.

So to get to the dining room you go through the grandkid's play room, the kitchen where Momma sits knitting and then into the official seating area.  Momma comes over and says (in very broken but understandable English) "We have pasta with meat sauce or butter and sage and chicken or veal.  Do you want red wine or white?"  And that's how you order.
And then the food comes and its so magically simple and wonderful that it dissolves away any foolish notions you might have had that a larger selection would have been better.  Because you know, as surely as you know you were smart to pack your fat pants, you know this was the best thing you could have eaten even if you'd had 10 pages of a menu from which to choose and you also know that this is the moment you have been waiting for because this is what epitomizes Italy: the restaurant run out of the proprietor's home, the verbal menu, the food that makes you want to binge and purge the afternoon away.
And with these views:

Then we had to drive back and really see Lake Garda.
It was a second feast, this one for our eyes and this one I can happily share.
(The lunch feast is currently residing on my thighs and gut and you don't want a photo of that mess, trust me).