The Italian Lakes

We were really looking forward to the Italian Lakes - oh how we were disappointed. After the ups of the previous days going through France, Italy is a grotty little hole. Cities are great if you can fly there, and I guess the Umbrian villas are wonderful too, but driving from Aosta to the North of Milan is just horrible. Not made any easier by the lack of road junction numbers. It was also not helped by 37 deg C high humidity and no air conditioning but still – rubbish. The Italians appear to have either very little money or very little pride (or both) because everywhere outside the cities is dirty, unkept, covered in tatty advertising and for the bulk of the day shut in the name of siesta. I cannot get over how horrible driving through the towns was, especially compared to the pleasure of the French counter parts.
We at least thought that Lake Como would be great, again, what a nightmare, a metropolis of villas extending up the hills as far the eye could see with little way of getting near any of the water, certainly not in a camper where there was no parking available, so we ended up driving on only catching a brief glimpse of the much over rated and over developed highly polluted lake.
One small highlight whilst we were desperately trying to find a campsite was winding our way at random through a small village Bosisio Parnini (actually very nice) and ending up in a park by the Lake Pusiano. Given the heat, it was kit off and in the water.( i will get a picture up when I get it off Jo's camera)
Problem was that we still had no where to stay, this area is simply not safe enough to stay at the side of the road (a general problem in Italy) and there were no campsites around. Eventually I managed to get an internet connection and find a couple of sites about 20km further up the road. And there we found Camping de Riviera – it is just ghastly. I know we have been spoilt over the last few days, but it is just murder. We are now looking at the map of Europe and going to head rapidly north to exit Italy which has been a massive disappointment. It is too much like hard work trying to find safe decent places to stay.