A Week at Lake Garda

We're back! Back from a week at the beautiful Lake Garda in northern Italy.

We stayed at Riva on the north western corner of the lake, in the Hotel Sole, right on the edge of the lake. Beautiful place and a very good hotel.

It was a very relaxing holiday - we only did one organised tour. But we did a couple of disorganised ones too... By which I mean we just took ourselves off on a ferry down the lake a few times. A holiday at Lake Garda doesn't need much organising beyond finding a hotel and booking in.

The ferries start at 8:00am and finish around 8:00pm or thereabouts. They don't operate after dark. At the northern end of the lake where we were, there are mountains all around. You won't get spectacular sunsets there because the sun doesn't set - it just goes behind the mountain and then it gets progressively darker.

We'll no doubt have a look at some of the things we got up to in the next few entries, but suffice it to say that I can gel completely with the culture of sitting in pavement cafes, sipping granitas (Slush Puppies) or something called Aperol Spritzers which was quite nice too. Or even just a limonata - a lemon soda. On this first day we took a one-hour cruise to see a waterfall.

It's a pleasant trip but the waterfall is very hard to spot, being in a cove - more like a grotto really, as it is so dark that only me fiddling with Photoshop has made the waterfall just about visible here. In real life it is so dark in there that you haven't much chance of actually seeing it whilst you're sitting on a boat in the glare of the sun!

Then the boat turns round and heads out to the centre of the lake to come back - away from any other ferry traffic heading down the lake. The lake is popular with windsurfers and boating enthusiasts.

Back at Riva, there is still most of the afternoon left as we took an early flight out. We decide to walk along the path across the top of the lake to the town on the north-east corner called Torbole.

This is around a three and a half mile walk and affords some wonderful views of the lake.

Somewhere near the halfway point a river flows down from the mountains and out into the lake. This is a popular spot for sunbathers and especially families as you can splash about in the river.

Now here's something we weren't expecting! A rumble of thunder makes us turn round in surprise and the colour of the sky makes us think twice about carrying on to Torbole! We start to retrace our steps and feel the first gentle splashes of rain.

By the time we get back to Riva... We dived under the canopy of a gelateria - an ice cream bar. The rain was now torrential and bouncing spectacularly off the paths whilst a steady stream of water running off the canopies splashed far out from the front of the café.

And the ice creams... did I mention the ice creams...? This is a coppa fragole. Strawberries, vanilla and strawberry ice cream and fresh cream. Later in the week I took to dispensing with the fresh cream - it detracted from the taste in my view.

So to come: more slouching around the lakeside cafes (we did an awful lot of that...) and a look at the Dolomite mountains, some night views of Riva and trips to Limone and Malcesine by ferry. And we might take a closer look at one of the ferries - a beautiful 1902 paddle steamer called G.Zanardelli. It doesn't steam any more, but is still driven by its side paddles rather than a propeller.

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