I don't really know what I expected at Lake Garda, or at Sirmione in particular. But what ever I had expected, it certainly was not what we found - and that was wall to wall crowds.
Google gives the bald facts
Sirmione is a resort town on the southern bank of Lake Garda, in northern Italy. It’s known for its thermal baths and Rocca Scaligera, a medieval castle overlooking the lake. Set at the tip of a peninsula, the Archaeological Site of Grotte di Catullo encompasses a Roman villa, a museum and olive trees. Just below the ruins is the rocky Jamaica Beach. The church of San Pietro in Mavino is adorned with frescoes.
But it is clearly very popular with Italians. It being the end of October when we arrived, I expected that the summer crowds would no longer be here - wrong. To enter the tip of the peninsular, which is banned to tourists, we had to queue and explain to the guardian of the entrance that we were staying in a hotel in the banned zone. I then drove through the castle keep and emerged into a town without cars but with more people than one could possibly imagine. It was then a question of slowly nudging our way through the throng, and finding our hotel. Once checked in to the hotel, we decided to stay put in Sirmione the next day, rather than driving round Lake Garda.
The hotel was a modest but very pleasant, tourist hotel, and we had a very nice room with a balcony overlooking the lake. Although they did serve breakfast, the hotel did not do dinner, and finding a restaurant was difficut - they were all full. Eventually we did find one on the main square.: the food was reasonable and the service very friendly . But we had the same problem the next night,so just settled for a drink in the hotel
On our complete day at Sirmione, we walked around the other side of the castle entrance - and that is really just a vast car park to cater for the hordes of visitors. And after that we walked round the peninsula including the trek to Jamaica Beach
Sirmione is a lovely spot, but must suffer from over-tourism all year round
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We had a bracing walk around the end of the Sirmione Peninsular, which entailed getting down to a beach, then picking our way under some cliffs in order to reach Jamaica Beach. Here, serendipitously, we found a beach bar and enjoyed some light refreshment. The return was easier as there was a fully paved path up and out
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