Camping Serenella

One of our favourite sites in Italy, right beside the promenade and beach beside Lake Garda. Roads can be busy during peak season, so better to use the ferry service to visit other lakeside towns. Plan your route carefully and a trip to Riva at the head of the lake can take four hours. The embarkation point in Bardolino is a pleasant half-hour walk away, less if you know where to park. The restaurant is good, with a particularly pleasant outdoor terrace.

Our main issue with holidays is we always want to revisit everywhere again because revisiting places where we’ve made lovely memories is amazing, however within 10 minutes of arriving at Serenella we knew this wouldn’t be the case with this holiday. Our eurocamp cabin was squeezed into a minimum space with nowhere to park our car. We popped back to reception and after much chat between the staff we were shown a parking place at the far end of the camp, when we suggested that wasn’t what we were either expecting or would be happy to agree to we were met with such aggression from the receptionist that we felt threatened. We then unpacked the bedding only to find the duvet cover had two large holes in it. There was a bracket on the wall where a TV probably should have been fixed but nothing there. Sitting outside at any time was not relaxing with the constant noise of traffic on the main road just a few metres away and the smell of cigarette smoke from the neighbouring cabin wasn’t pleasant. At night the windows had to remain closed to shut out the noise and smoke Using the shower needed careful planning, allowing it to run for 5 minutes to get warm and then jumping in for the 30 seconds before it became dangerously hot then timing the next 30 seconds as it cooled down again before returning to ice cold water for a further 5 minutes with this cycle repeating for the duration Having no WiFi is always a mixed blessing but we weren’t made aware of this when booking and there was literally no signal in the camp ( update after being here a week we realised there is WiFi we just hadn’t been given the code, when I asked reception why we had not been given the code on check in I was told we don’t give it automatically you have to ask, no idea why other than to make your stay less pleasant) The positives are food in the restaurant is ok, although not as good as we were expecting from Italy, there are however some wonderful restaurants along the path around the lake and only a short walk to get to them, the bed was comfortable and the cabin was clean on arrival.

Stayed here in a Eurocamp mobile home for a week. On the whole, it's a nice, clean site and is in a beautiful location with access to the lake and is convenient for exploring the nearby towns of Bardelino and Garda via a lakeside path. Pros: Lakeside location Friendly staff at reception, restaurant, shop and animation Nice pool and separate kids pools with free sun loungers Good shop with delicious fresh bread in a morning. Could just do with some fresh fruit and veg Depends on your perspective: Limited wi-fi coverage (and it keeps booting you off), along with it being a bit of a mobile dead zone. Cons: Limited parking for people in the mobile homes, leading to cars parked in places making it tight to manoeuvre around the site. Shallow pitches which leads to cars, bikes and caravans sticking out into the already narrow roads around the site. Kid's evening activities go on until 21:30 - a bit late for the target audience. A bit of road noise - it's a small site and you can hear traffic on the passing road from pretty much anywhere.