Visiting Verona en route from Venice to Sirmione/Lake Garda

I would do the stopover for 1/2 day. I don't know anything about parking. The only reason I would make a separate trip is if you wanted to catch a performance. I was there in winter, so I didn't have that option, but I hear it is wonderful! http://www.arena.it/arena/en/pages/schedule-arena-di-verona.html

Sheron, I have been to Verona three times over many decades. Many years ago, when I was an exchange student in Trento, my host family took me to an evening opera performance in the Arena. That was magnificent and memorable, but not really a "visit" to Verona. Then about 15 years ago, I made a day trip to Verona for an afternoon. I found it congested, rushed and neither really enjoyable or memorable. Then, last year in May, I spent four nights in Verona, very much enjoyed strolling around at all times of the day, evening and night, with day trips to Sirmione and Ravenna. So, I'm not a big fan of a daytime half day in Verona. Also, while I enjoyed a morning in Sirmione, including much of the time walking out way beyond the commercial/touristy area, I certainly didn't need more time there. Do you have a special reason to stay in Sirmione? There seem to be so many other excellent Lake Garda towns to be based in.

Sheron,

We stayed 4 nights in Verona last year and enjoyed the highlights there, then we took a day trip to Peschiera where we took a ferry & visited some of the lakeside villages.
We did not visit Sirmione because I'd read that it was very crowded & touristy.

Just wondering... why are you driving from Venice to Lake Garda when this trip can be easily done via train?
If you plan to drive to the northern part of Lake Garda, then having a car is optimal, but not necessary if you're just driving to
Sirmione, IMO.

Peschiera is only a 15 minute train ride from Verona. Verona is only 1 Hr, 27 minutes train ride from Venice ( on a Regionale Veloce train @ €8,60pp)

You may also consider visiting Padua-- only 30 minutes from Venice via train.

Happy planning!

If you are adept at Italian urban driving, you can get near the historic center of Verona in straightfoward fashion, although it takes some time as the Verona urban area is fairly large. The road signs are good and the parking areas well signed. However, you are underestimating the beauty and importance of Verona, one of Italy's real treasures. Better to spend a 1/2 day in Sirmione and 2 days in Verona!

If you can't spend the night in Verona, a daytrip may be better than nothing, but it will be quite crowded in August. I am not familiar with parking, but I have googled "parking (city name)" for other cities and several web sites have come up. I would park near the train station if possible and take public transportation from there.

We wanted to stay in Sirmione so we can get up really early and take pictures of the castle before all the day trippers arrive and I planned to spend a day & a half using ferries to visit other towns on the lake. It sounds like Verona really deserves more time but unfortunately I'm having trouble devoting more time to it.

The reason we will have a car is so we can visit towns at the north end of Lake Garda but depending on what towns we choose to visit, we may/may not need a car at all. We will need a car for the next portion of our trip which is Tuscany/Umbria so I just figured we would pick up a car when leaving Venice and keep it for the Lake Garda portion of our trip. My husband doesn't mind driving in Italy (done it twice before) and our hotel in Sirmione has a parking lot so I just figured we'd have the car with us for 3 extra days in case we wanted/needed it. I'm also thinking of visiting Bergamo en route from Sirmione to Siena and thus would need a car for that. But, as I refine my plans, I can always ditch the car for the Lake Garda portion of our trip.

Sounds like parking in Verona might be a bit of a problem...I'll have to research it further. If parking is a challenge, then we can drive directly from Venice to Sirmione and then visit Verona as a day trip.

Thanks for all your valuable input.

Larry, what other towns on Lake Garda would you suggest visiting? We will probably only have time to visit 2-3 other towns.

Parking should not be a problem in Verona. The historic center is surrounded by parking areas, and it's compact enough to be totally walkable. There's a listing and a map here: http://www.comune.verona.it/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=3174

Verona is very walkable. However, if you already have a car I think you could find strategically placed parking spots across town and do your own "hop-on-hop-off" tour. We had only a 1/2 day to see the city and used the hop-on-hop-off bus to maximize what we could see. I believe it was 20 euro and was well worth the 2 hours of sightseeing time and the number of things we got to see that we certainly couldn't have walked to in such a short time. After seeing the highlights on the bus we were able to make more educated choices where we wanted to hop off and walk. The hop-on-hop-off bus only runs every 60 minutes which was limiting. Fortunately for you, you'll have a car and won't need to worry about the timetable.

I did find this guide to public parking/parking meter's in Verona:

http://www.car-parking.eu/italy/verona

Sheron, Roberto and others are the forum's experts on Lake Garda, not me. In general, I have read here that the most beautiful scenery and most interesting towns to visit and stay in are at the northern end of the lake. In May 2014 I merely took a day trip from Verona to Sirmione by bus, ferry to Bardolino, then bus back to Verona late afternoon. While Sirmione was nice, and Bardolino OK, in retrospect, I wish I had taken my day trip to the northern part of the lake. It is hard to visit south and north in one day, especially by public transportation. By the way, are you planning to photograph the castle at Sirmione from the outside or inside? Not sure what you can get from the outside, and you cannot get inside until they open up to the public, unless you have some special VIP status I don't know about. Even inside the castle, most of the photography is outside, not interior rooms. As I remember, I arrived relatively early AM and found quite a mob at the entry, there will likely be more people in August, so I took a long quite rural walk out to the point, and the Roman ruins and museum that are there, then returned to go through the castle in the late morning.

Sheron,

I'm a bit late getting into the discussion, but a few thoughts to offer.....

• Having a car will be a benefit if staying in Sirmione, as it's awkward to get there by public transit (no rail station, so only bus or taxi - the rail stations are in Peschiera and Desenzano).
• If your hotel in Sirmione is within the walls, it could take awhile to get a car in or out of there, due to the crowds. At busy times cars just stop and wait for five or more minutes until there's an opening. If the hotel has parking space outside the walls, that would be better.
• Especially on weekends, the public car park can be completely saturated. From what I observed, cars waiting to get into the car park simply stop on the road to wait for a space to become available, a practice which quickly creates a traffic jam.
• I found Sirmione dreadfully crowded and it wasn't the most pleasant experience. I didn't find anything special about the place and don't plan to return. I could hardly wait to get out of there!
• Peschiera likely has the best boat service going to other destinations along the lake, as that's where they appear to be based. Peschiera also has convenient rail and bus access, and I thought it was quite a pleasant town.
• I believe someone else mentioned, towns at the north end of the lake are among the most popular and those can also be crowded at times with German and Austrian tourists. Two of the more popular towns are Limone and Malcesine. Having a car is definitely an asset for visiting those as there's no rail access. However, I've heard that traffic can be horrendous at times on the winding roads, especially to Limone.

I've heard that Malcesine is a wonderful town to visit, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to explore it on my last trip to that area. It certainly looks beautiful from the ferry. I do plan to return there at some point in the future to check it out (possibly next year).

Thanks for your replies. I think we will opt to stay in a different town on the lake. I had also heard that the towns on the north side were more picturesque so I think it's wise to switch towns. What I'm really trying to do is recreate our wonderful experience in the mid-lake area of Lake Como. We stayed in Varenna & absolutely loved it. I'd love to find a town as picturesque and quaint as Varenna. My husband suggested we just go back to Varenna but we are returning to so many places on this trip that we've already visited and I wanted to throw in at least a few days in a place we've never visited before!

The only thing I'm concerned about is the traffic situation in the northern part of the lake. I'm hoping we can keep the car parked for the most part & use ferries to visit a few other towns on the lake.

Sheron,

The traffic situation may not be as bad on the Malcesine side of the lake. Hopefullly Roberto will spot this post as I'm sure he will have some good tips.

We visited Riva del Garda at the top of the lake recently, and it was really pleasant. A medium sized town with many pleasant views and a small older core. It was a nice weekend day and the town handled the surge of visitors easily. You'd also be close to Trento and the Museums at Rovereto.