Discovering Lombardia in 72 hours

2019 seems to be the year of weddings for many of our friends.

We were invited to attend a wedding in Montichiari over the weekend and this ended up being the perfect opportunity to explore Lombardia a little bit for the first time.

I flew in to Milan and had planned on doing some sightseeing, as well as seeing an work friend at Spotify’s Milan office before taking the fast train to Torino.

Little did I know when planning in advance that it was going to be around 34 degrees that day in Milan… Safe to say I was soaked to the bone by the time I had to head to Torino.

After an evening in Torino we jumped in the car and drove 2.5 hours to Montichiari where Luca was to marry his beautiful Nicoletta.

We left our stuff in the bed & breakfast that they were kind enough to host us in, freshened up a bit and headed over to their home for drinks and nibbles before the festivities could begin.

The ceremony took place in the cathedral (!!) and it was probably one of the most breathtaking experiences ever – they even had a choir singing, just like in Love Actually <3.

Not to mention the ‘football choir’ they had through the day, and by that I mean Luca’s entire football team that sang chants and caused mischief.

(I’m not crying… you’re crying!)

The reception was held in an old country estate that also had a vineyard at the back.

As we arrived they served loads of different delicious appetisers and bubbly in the front garden, but we were then asked to walk through the grounds to have dinner sitting in the actual vineyard!

The mood was on an all time high, people were chanting and singing, the wine was lovely and the food was out of this world. All in all it was definitely one of the best weddings we’ve ever been to!

After a few hours of sleep we got up to have breakfast with the rest of the guests and prepare for our day trip to Lake Garda.

We also found out that Nicoletta’s family actually manages the B&B where we stayed, so if you ever find yourself in the area, we can highly recommend staying there – it’s super nice!

After having said our goodbyes we drove about 30 minutes to the lake and had a walk around the little town of Desenzano del Garda that was very idyllic.

Alberto had booked us lunch at a seafood restaurant, so we tried out a few different dishes before continuing our adventure.

We drove out to the peninsula in the hopes of being able to explore Scaligero Castle, but it was full with people and no parking spaces, so we decided to head up to Castello di Drugolo instead and catch the nice view.

All in all a lovely weekend – I just need to brush up on my Italian language skills and I reckon I’d fit right in ;)