I have waited too long to write a post and don’t know where to begin because we have been so many places.  Plus, from time to time I have writers block.  This is just a quick post and will try to catch up with more later.   

Driving to Lake Garda which is in northern Italy south of Milan.

We stayed at an Aires (1/2 EU per hour) just a few feet from the lake and in the town of Riva.  There are so many flowers blooming in the town that it smells like a perfume factory.  There are bigger mountains than these that rise straight up out of the lake.

Constantly, there are castles and churches perched upon hilltops and mountains always making us think of the hard labor that went into building these structures.

We drove up to this castle in Ivrea near Turin only to find out it was privately owned.  We were able to walk around outside a little bit though.  Parts of the castle are an exclusive hotel and restaurant. 

View from the castle overlooking the town and mountains in the direction of France.

We took a wrong turn in the town and were in an area of streets that were one way.  No matter which way we went we got further into trouble.

Finally, we said to heck with it and went the wrong way down a one way street. 

Ivrea has a McDonalds with free Wi-Fi.  The only problem is that to get on you have to start an account that needs your name, birthdate, place of birth, address, passport number and an Italian phone number.  Several places that we have gotten on the internet took our passport and then there is a system to record the time accessing the internet and what sites were visited.  Everyone says that this is because of September 11th.  So far I had only heard how hard we make it for visitors coming to the U.S.