My record of a week's holiday at Lake Garda in northern Italy, staying at the Hotel Sole in Riva del Garda at the top of the lake.
Each place of interest is shown on its own separate article, reached by clicking/tapping the eleven photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
21 August 2012. We take a last look round Riva on Tuesday night before we are picked up first thing in the morning for our transfer to Verona Airport.
We walked around the front of our hotel, Hotel Sole, and past the entrance to La Rocca, the castle and museum. This brings you to a small piazza.
In the building on the left was Reptiland - a zoological presentation of reptiles and snakes. For some reason Fran didn't want to go in...
Carrying on round the moat of La Rocca, the moored boats and view down to the lake is very pleasing. There is a camp site behind the lights to the left and the thump thump thump of loud music came from that direction. We weren't tempted to go closer to hear it properly...
We made our way back through the back streets and past pavement cafes. We weren't particularly wanting a late night as we had to be at the pickup point near the ferry ticket office by 7:00am.
So we arrived back at the main piazza and Hotel Portici, seen above and then skirted round to spend a last hour or so with a drink or two at the Cristallo bar and gelaterie. We would have quite liked a last ice cream too, but after our excellent dinner at the hotel, I'm not sure we would have been wise to have done so!
A last look at G.Zanardelli, the paddle steamer, all tied up and secure for the night at her berth.
I have to say that spending a week at Riva is very relaxing. There's no rush to get anywhere. If you miss a ferry there'll be another one sooner or later and there's enough bars to be able to sit and wait in comfort and with your favourite drink to hand.
So that's our holiday over. In the morning we get up bleary eyed and knowing the breakfast room will not yet be open. However the night porter at Hotel Sole makes us a cappuchino and brings a selection of breakfast bars (some nice and some like nothing I have ever tasted before or wish to again...!)
The coach turns up on time and Verona airport is small but ok. There's not a lot of food available there though - a tip for anyone who might be going there!
Monday 20 August. Once again we are up to catch the 9:00am ferry from Riva, sailing down Lake Garda to Limone.
It's the first stop on the ferry's way to Malcesine. We arrive at Limone after 40 minutes of pleasant cruising down the lake and arrive to an almost deserted landing stage. Once the ferry is tied up to the jetty though, people start to appear from where they have been hiding from the sun!
Limone is spectacular in that the sheer cliffs fall almost vertically into the lake. Here tunnels have been blasted through one section of cliff to make a throughway from one side of Limone to the other. Shops occupy caverns within the tunnel.
We make our way through the shops with only a few near monetary losses and have our morning intake of latte machiatto at this cafe bar.
It had some wonderful small octagonal lamps that I had to work into a photograph.
From where we are we have a good view of the lake and watch the ferries come and go whilst we have our drink. The small piazza where we are has a fountain and a small viewpoint with benches.
Then it's back into another row of shops. Fran's purse is jumping in her pocket, desperate to get out and fling money around... She stops to touch a leather jacket - as an ex-leather worker she can't walk past a leather shop without both breathing in deeply and casting a critical eye over every piece. Luckily this time it is just touch and go...
We pass a museum of tourism that looks as though it might be diverting for a few minutes but as I've rushed Miss Franny past the shops, she is not going to be tempted by a museum...
We come to a wide promenade and stroll along enjoying the sunshine that is cranking up the heat and encouraging tiny beads of perspiration to form and roll down my back. I hate it when my hair gets all flat and plastered to my head... well... I seem to remember that I do...
It really is hot. We sit down for a moment with a limonate - a lemonade. Very refreshing. It is decided that I can go in the museum on my own, leaving Fran free to go looking at the shops.
"Take your time..." says Miss Franny, "no need to rush in this heat..." Oh dear... this sounds expensive...
The locally produced drink is limoncello, sometimes called limoncina, a lemon based liqueur packaged in a range of bottles some of which are shaped like the lake as seen from above or on a map.
I go into the museum. It has a few 3D exhibits and a whole host of old photographs, tourism adverts and posters and snippets of history about the lake's past including industries and the ferries. The exhibits include old cash tills, marked in Lira and quite nostalgic for anyone who, like me, has spent part of their working life in a shop. There is a jug and ewer set on a stand, a reminder of hotel rooms (or any bedroom) in the days before running water.
There's a huge book of clippings from when the James Bond film crew descended to film the car chase from Quantum of Solace that opens the film. A few show a crane fishing a rather banged up Aston Martin out of the lake near Torbole… Whoops!
We head back to the landing stage to check on times. The Brescia is approaching. As the engines rev a thick plume of smoke comes from her and we can see that it is passing through the space occupied by passengers. We decide to have lunch and then go back...
The ferry turns to go. You can see the haze of black smoke on her left hand side. Standing in the sun, reading the timetables, we realise why everyone chooses to find some shade rather than queue for the ferries!
And on the way back to Riva, there's a good view of the road tunnels, right at the bottom of the photo. It is through these that Daniel Craig as 007 James Bond, throws his Aston Martin about in a desperate chase and gun battle with the baddies! The tunnels and roads were made by Mussolini's army during the 1930s.
When we get back to Riva, we see that a stage is being set up for a concert. We hear the orchestra whilst we are eating our evening meal in the hotel and as we eagerly arrive at the piazza to catch the end of the concert - they reach it...
We hang about in hope that the orchestra might come back - as no one was starting moving equipment or instruments away. However when they did come back they played the quieter bits of Scheherezade that you just couldn't hear at the back of the square with everyone talking and Italian mothers screaming at children. Ho hum!
Sunday 19 August. Sunday morning and we set off to walk the 4km to Torbole.
This is the day for some wonderful Lake Garda scenery. Although we set out straight after breakfast the temperature was already in the mid to high 30s and climbing. The last 2km were gaspingly hot!
This is one of the most scenic walks to do. The Via Gardesana. From this little inlet you could hire boats and small yachts to go out on the lake. Tiny black fish were swimming in the water.
Now we come to the beaches. Pebble beaches but none the worse for that. This being a Sunday they were crowded. The north of Lake Garda is within easy reach of Munich and lots of Germans come down for the weekend either to laze on the beach and top up tans or to squeeze themselves into lycra and scare you to death by powering past on racing bikes, groups of ten or more all dressed exactly the same, determined looks on their faces, sparing neither man nor beast... Even if they are not exactly in a race they act as if they are and any lesser mortal who doesn't give way will soon be shy a limb or two!
I didn't take any photos of the beaches because I didn't want to be labelled as I labelled the several old guys who were wandering up and down past the bikinis and odd topless young damsel openly holding their i-phones in the air, videoing the female delights they passed. For Heaven's sake! Now I can appreciate the feminine form as much as anyone but this was a step too far methinks! However, nice to see that the Italian elderly have a grasp of technology...
And so we reach Torbole. Hot. In need of a drink. Wanting to sit somewhere in the shade. And this spot, overlooking Torbole's harbour with the delightful little building on the jetty affords us just that with a set of tables under a roof but open on the side to allow us the view.
We were sitting behind the arched windows seen on the right of this view. No matter what angle you choose that little building just looks perfect!
At the northern end of Lake Garda the mountains rise up on both sides and it's almost impossible not to point your camera here there and everywhere, snapping away.
What an expensive place this would have been twenty years ago when we all had to use film and then pay again to have it processed. I used to spend a fortune on film and "D+P" as we used to call developing and printing. I'd have bankrupted myself here!
We spend a little time in Torbole. Then walk down to the landing stage to catch the S. Martino ferry back to Riva. It's only 4km. But that is just too far to repeat the walk in this heat!
Back in Riva and we have the now inevitable stop at Gelaterie Cristallo. From here we can sit and watch the ferries arrive and depart. Tipple of the day is an Aperol Spritzer.
Saturday 18 August. We take the ferry down Lake Garda from Riva to Malcesine.
The nine o'clock ferry from Riva is the G.Zanardelli, a paddle steamer that is so beautiful it deserves - and will get - an entry all to itself in a day or two. Meanwhile Fran stretches out as at this hour we do not have too many fellow travellers!
I always think that the view of Riva from Lake Garda is one of the most beautiful bits of scenery on Earth. Who could fail to fall in love with a view like that?
The nine o'clock ferry does not cross the lake to Torbole, but instead immediately heads southwards down the lake towards its first stop at Limone. This takes 40 minutes and the time is spent relaxing, drinking in the views and feeling the breeze in your face. There's a set of dots floating in the sky in the distance and we wonder what they are until we get closer and can make them out properly.
They turn out to be the large canopies of kite surfers. These criss-cross the lake at a few points but these are whizzing to and fro in front of our path and seem almost suicidally eager to get as close to our bows as possible, like birds darting in front of your car down a country lane. The G.Zanardelli may be an old ship, but there is nothing wrong with its hooter, which frightens us to death never mind the kite surfers!
And then the imposing cliffs of Limone. The first sight of Limone is of the terraces of stone with pillars rising as though to support a roof. These are lemon terraces. Limone does not grow all that many lemons now, but in the past these groves were filled with trees and produced some of the largest lemons you can imagine. Nothing like the small weedy things we get in England! They are like small rugby balls! You will find some on the markets and shop fronts in Limone.
The G.Zanardelli hooter blasts again briefly to let the shore staff know to leave the ticket office and stand by to receive the next group of tourists. There's a sizeable crowd of people waiting to board, armed to the teeth with cameras, sun tan lotion, excited children and aged mothers. The Italians have far more aged mothers than aged fathers it would seem... They swarm onto the ferry, jostling for places against the rail where they can be photographed with Limone as the backdrop.
"Bella!" enthuses one daughter as she snaps for posterity a wrinkled 80-year-old, clad in a skirt matched (I say this loosely) with a bikini top that has a rather optimistic cup size. What used to be her breasts hang into it and curl back up in the bottom of the cups, the nipples pointing vertically at the sky. Behind me a young man leans over the rail to be sick into the lake...
For the good of my health and the retention of my breakfast I try to concentrate on the lakeside scenery of Limone. There, for instance, is the bar cafe we sat in, in 2004 with my own mother, who would not be told to stop flapping away at a hovering wasp until she did connect and managed to knock it out of the sky and straight into her glass of wine... Ah... we're off again!
The crossing (for Malcesine is on the eastern side of the lake) from Limone to our final destination takes a further 25 minutes. We are now on a quite crowded boat and there are people to watch - and avoid watching - and a new set of kite surfers to negotiate.
Malcesine has a castle set prominently on a huge jutting rock by the lakeside and this is what you look at to gauge how close you are. The G.Zanardelli will turn at this point and return to Riva so we sail past the landing stage and turn to come back to it. The ramps clatter onto the side of the boat and we are herded off and onto the terra firma of Malcesine (say it "Mal-chess-sin-ay" with the accent on the second syllable).
The first thing you have to do is to watch your ferry depart. The side paddles of the G.Zanardelli churn the water from blue to white and she pulls away from the landing stage, leaving you to the tender mercies of Malcesine for a few hours.
