Tuesday 29 June 2003. We fly out from Manchester to Verona, Italy, from where we are picked up by coach transfer to our holiday destination for the week: Lake Garda.
It's not an early flight so by the time we get there we are tired, hungry and wanting to do very little except find the hotel and something to eat.
Our hotel - the Hotel Portici - is behind the flags. In fact it's the pink building behind the flags, the yellow building to the left and the orange building to the left of that. We find we have a suite of rooms in the orange bit, overlooking a narrow street on the side of the building. Not just the en-suite bedroom we were expecting, but a small kitchen area and a sitting room too. We are booked in for evening meals anyway so the kitchen won't get used for anything more than making the occasional coffee!
There's time for a swift explore after our meal before we collapse into a bar and vegetate for a few hours before bed calls.
Wednesday 30 June 2003. Ferries go off from here down the full length of the lake, calling at just about every town that exists around the lake. However there's a short walk to the opposite side of the lake which is only about 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) or so wide at this end, with Riva being on the top left corner and a town called Torbole ("Tor-bow-lay") on the top right corner.
It's a very pleasant walk. Temperatures started climbing and didn't stop until they were in the mid 30s centigrade. About halfway between the two towns a river, the Fiume Sarca, flows into the lake and is crossed by a bridge.
We stopped and had a drink at the tables and I started a sketch but abandoned it... There'll be some later on! Take that as a warning... Incidentally, this being 2003, digital cameras were still only capable of producing small images and I've done quite a bit of work to sharpen them as much as I could. I did have my SLR film camera with me too, but used the digital most days.
In fact this was the digital. One of the first with a zoom function! Most people still hadn't seen one at all - it was astonishing to be able to see your photo straight away on the back screen of the camera as soon as it was taken.
Anyway, I'm digressing... As the morning wore on and the temperatures rose, the shingle beaches of the lake started to fill up with sunbathers. Quite a liberated place - you wouldn't see some of those sights on Blackpool beach I can tell you!
A regatta of wind surfers is under way and attracts a few spectators. We are nearing Torbole but we'll have a look at that in the next article.
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