My parents told me we were going on a cycling holiday in Italy. I wasn’t excited because I thought cycling was boring. We arrived in Mantua, a city surrounded by three lakes. There are four main squares and two big palaces in the center. Some of the buildings are from medieval times. We visited the Palazzo Ducale, where the ruling Gonzaga family lived for almost 400 years. It used to be the biggest palace in Europe with over a thousand people living there! One room had amazing frescoes painted in 1474 by a Renaissance artist named Andrea Mantegna. One fresco shows the Gonzaga family. There are two arches. In the left arch, you can see Ludovico and Barbara Gonzaga with their children. Ludovico is holding a letter and talking to a man who might be his brother. The people in the painting look very real. When you look up, you can see that Mantegna painted the ceiling to look like it’s open to the sky!

The next day, we had a long bike ride ahead of us. We picked up our bikes and I chose an e-bike. Our bags were taken by car to the next place we were staying. We headed north towards Lake Garda, rode around the lakes, went through a nature reserve, and followed the river. We saw beautiful birds and the weather was perfect. We stayed at a small hotel in a village called Borghetto.

On the third day, we did a circular route from the village. There was a cycle track through a park with a lake and a maze. We had fun trying to find our way out of the maze and saw deer. We also had a picnic!

The next day, we cycled north towards Lake Garda, passing through orchards and vineyards. We stayed in a town with medieval walls on the southern edge of Lake Garda. We stopped for lunch before heading east to a village near Verona.

On the fifth day, we cycled into Verona and got ready to explore.

Verona was amazing! You need more than a day to see everything. There’s an incredible arena, a Roman amphitheatre built in the first century. In Roman times, 20,000 people watched gladiator contests there. Now they have open-air opera performances. Everyone who knows Romeo and Juliet goes to see ‘Juliet’s house’ (even though Juliet didn’t exist). People say that if you stand under the balcony and make a wish about love, it will come true. I didn’t believe in that romantic stuff, so I didn’t do it. My mom asked if I wanted to go shopping, but I said exploring Verona was much more interesting.