My Average Holidays

If you’ve not read part 1, then click here. The next couple of days proved the best, both in terms of weather and exploration. A lot of times these things go hand in hand. This is one of the first holidays I’ve just ‘winged it’, but to be honest, I don’t like it much and felt that I should have put a bit more effort in. One of the few things I/we had looked at was going to Malcesine (not pronounced how you think) and Limone Sul Garda. Both of these are must-see towns when in the north of the lake, so that’s what we did.

To get to these, we decided to use the ferry. This runs fairly regularly and is a bit of a rip-off. A round trip from Riva to Malcesine for two people, which takes about an hour each way, is €46! You can get a discount through the Garda Guest Card, which you can get via your hotel and is free, but you can only use the discount once on the ferry. There’s lots of other free/discounted stuff as well, so worth getting.

The ferry starts at 8 am, so we got up and got on the first one. The first stop that we wanted to get off was Limone, but I had the genius idea (although I didn’t know it at the time) of doing Malcesine first. On the ferry with us were two sets of mother/daughter holidaymakers, one pair of whom were sat next to us in the restaurant in the hotel. I’d noticed that there seemed to be quite a few mother/daughter couples. It’s not something I’ve really seen anywhere else. Lyn is very nosy (it’s the only reason she uses Facebook) and has quite good hearing, and she informed me that with regard to the ones in the hotel, the mother was desperately trying to be ‘friends’ with the daughter. For my part, I assume that all mother/daughter holidays are the daughter scamming a free holiday from the recently divorced mother. I think the Italian lakes are definitely the sort of place a recently divorced middle-aged woman would want to go. They’d probably read a Mills & Boon about it at some point. (F’ing hell! M&B is still a thing!).

Anyway, the other mother/daughter couple were in ‘sporty gear’ and probably German. As soon as we docked in Malcesine, they shot off the ferry and up the hill. Lyn and I had no idea where the cable car was, but I assumed that’s where they were going, so we followed at a much slower pace. Eventually, we came to the cable car (the video on the website is very good), and lots of other Germans were getting out of minibuses with very large bags. Not sure where to go, we went through an entrance for bicyclists and somehow ended up at the payment kiosks in front of everyone else. It’s €30pp for a return ticket! We crammed onto the first cable car of the day along with all the Germans with their large bags and the mother/daughter (all your running up the hill did you no good). It then dawned on me that the large bags weren’t tents but paragliders! Lake Garda seems to be an extreme sports destination. In particular, it’s a Mecca for anything involving wind… I’ll just leave that there. As well as jumping off the side of the mountains that surround it, the lake is covered with windsurfers, kite-surfers, and sailing boats.

Once at the top, we took in the breathtaking views and headed for a café for an expensive coffee and a toilet break. Initially, I was sceptical, especially given the cost of the cable car, but looking out with the sun shining in a clear blue sky, I could see why this is a top ten of things to do in Lake Garda, and at 1700 metres, it’s significantly higher (and cheaper) than Mount Snowdon, which we did last year.

It started to get busy as the cable car deposited more and more people at the top, so we decided to make our way back down. There was only one other person on the ride, which meant we could get some nice views and photos. Once down, we were shocked at the length of the queue to go up; it was right out of the building despite them using those zigzag line barriers. They’re called stanchions; I looked it up. So, top tip, go early or maybe late, definitely not mid-morning on a sunny day.

Once down, we explored the old medieval streets of Malcesine and the castle. We didn’t bother climbing up to the top of the tower because we thought we already had the best views. We then started looking around for somewhere to have lunch. This is always tricky as you want somewhere nice but don’t want to get ripped off. In the end, we stopped at Osteria alla Rosa. Would recommend it if you find yourself in Malcesine, but would recommend a hat because it’s at this point I got very sunburnt on my head.

We got back on the ferry after lunch and headed for Limone. As the ferry approached, I could see it was absolutely rammed. I said to Lyn that maybe we should skip it and come back tomorrow, but she said as we were already here, we might as well get off. You could barely move. We got a lemon sorbet in a lemon, a very expensive coffee, and then spent the rest of the time in a queue waiting for the next ferry.

The following day, we got up to get the ferry back to Limone, but the ferry was broken. The ‘captain’ of the next slow ferry told us to use the fast ferry because even though he would be leaving before it would get to Limone before he did. However, the woman on the fast ferry wouldn’t initially let us on, and I couldn’t say ‘speak to him’ because he’d already gone. In the end, they reluctantly let us on. Limone without people is much better, but if I’m honest, it strikes me as more of a lemon-based theme park. What fruit would you base a theme park on? Answer in the comments! That felt cringy, so maybe don’t.

Suitably lemoned up we headed back for the dock and got in the queue. An old German couple (I’d say in their 80’s) looked at the queue thought ‘fuck that’ and just sorta pushed in. The woman then wandered off leaving her husband to hold their ‘stolen spot’ he however had other ideas and when a seat on a bench, adjacent but not in the queue, became available he went and sat on that. When she came back she couldn’t see him and started wandering up and down the queue looking for him. I resisted the urge to tell her where he was and don’t feel any guilt at all and neither did anyone else who also observed this scenario play out. Did they find each other? Yes of course but the lesson here is don’t leave your 80 year old husband to keep your stolen spot in a queue. I almost forgot! My recommendation for staying in Limone is Casa Fanny! It genuinely looks nice but you know why…

The following day, the weather turned. It rained constantly with a procession of thunderstorms. We’d found a supermarket earlier and got some stuff from there to take back to the hotel. Interestingly, it was the old people who predominantly used the self-serve… still frustratingly slow, but I’d be curious if this is just the case in Italy (or elsewhere). We did venture out for a bit of shopping and had lunch in another pizzeria; this one was called Leon D’Oro and had the best-rated pizza place in Riva. A chap at the door tried to get us to sit outside, in the rain, probably to attract other customers, but we sacked that off. We were greeted by a nonna (grandmother), I assume the matriarch of the family or possibly one they rent for authenticity. The pizza was nice.

It was still raining for our last day but less thundery. Evidence of the weather change could be seen by all the snow that had appeared on top of the mountains. We took a gentle walk around the less touristy bits but eventually ended up at the town museum. It was free to get in using the Trentino card, but I would recommend it even if you had to pay. A nice lady showed us around, encouraging us to touch things! For our final meal, we didn’t bother with the hotel and instead found a German restaurant called Kapuziner, and the food was excellent, so a nice culinary surprise to end the holiday on.

And that was Lake Garda ticked off the list. Would we go back? Yes! But I’d qualify that with 2 points. We would probably try the south part of the lake or maybe a different one and we would probably look for an apartment instead of a hotel. We’ve stayed in a couple of Italian hotels now and they’ve been a little disappointing, at least in the price range we can afford. Casa Fanny next time!

I got a new travel App called Polarsteps, which is quite good for tracking and organising your trips you can follow me from here. It also produces a nice video at the end and you can order photo books.