An Italian Lake You've Just Garda See At Least Once

I was surrounded by lithe, tanned gods and goddesses in speedos and bikinis. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb as I was glacial white to their Mediterranean bronze. And instead of a speedo, I was wearing the biggest, brightest pair of baggy swimming shorts ever made. I don't have a photo, but Roger Moore's parachute from the opening credits of The Spy Who Loved Me is the closest thing I can think of.

I ended my first trip to Italy in 2011 with a celebratory swim in the clear, inviting waters of Lake Garda, somewhere around the town of Lazise. I'd been dreaming of this lake ever since seeing a photo in a travel brochure about ten years earlier and now here I was, and the photo had undersold it, frankly.

The thing is, this was a very last minute (think day of departure) booking, and I hadn't packed a swimming costume. I'd hardly packed anything at all. I was in the UK for my nephew's christening, I had a few days free, and Italy was just over there. So I booked the flights before my brain could get in the way, took my laptop out of my day pack, put in some spare underwear and a toothbrush, then set off.

Swimming hadn't entered my mind while sitting in my sister's living room in Bracknell, looking out at another day of endless rain. I thought my one pair of cargo shorts would be fine for a two day trip but they were no longer going to cut it if I was going to swim in the lake, then fly back to England a few hours later. I had to nip into a tourist shop, and I bought the only thing even slightly suitable - and I'm being generous with the word "slightly" (and the word "thing").

I regret none of it.

The first 36 hours are a blur. I landed and walked around Naples. Walked around Sorrento in the morning, took a minibus and walked up Mount Vesuvius, then took a train to Rome, and walked around the city until I had a blowout in one of my flip flops. Back to my hotel and slept for about thirteen minutes, then got up to catch a train to Verona, and closer to Lake Garda. The airport bus dropped me off at a small town about 3 miles away from my hotel. No problem, but no map, no Uber, and no internet. And rapidly, no light.

Nobody in any of the pubs could tell me where my hotel was - at least I think that's what they were saying. I walked in what felt like the right direction, hoping, and somehow arrived. To this day I'm not entirely sure how. I'm choosing to count it as instinct rather than luck.

From that point on, my path was smooth. I got a taxi from the hotel to the lake and arranged for him to fetch me and take me to the airport at 4pm. Onward travel organised, I settled in to enjoy my big day at the lake of my dreams. And I didn't have a clue what to do.

I bought the shorts. I swam. I had a cold beer on the edge of the lake with wet hair and a return flight in three hours.

I hired a mountain bike and rode along the lake. Past gardens that made me feel personally inadequate. Past a villa that looked like it had been assembled specifically for a Bond film, complete with vintage speedboats parked outside like jewellery. Past cafes and cyclists and an amount of blue water that the photographs had, I can confirm, completely undersold.

I bought the shorts. I swam. I had a cold beer on the edge of the lake with wet hair and a return flight in three hours.

And then I got in the taxi, went to the airport, flew home, and spent the next fourteen years trying to get back.

Six Weeks In. First Date. Italy.

A couple of years later, in January 2013, I met my wife Loraine. She didn't know she was going to be my wife at the time. I had a fairly strong feeling about it, though, so a few months later I took her to Italy. She'd never been out of the country before. I thought about this for about thirty seconds and then booked flights to Venice.

She'd never been out of the country before. I thought about this for about thirty seconds and then booked flights to Venice.

The full story of that trip deserves its own post one day, and it will get one. I've said this out loud now, so I'm committed. The short version is this: we flew in via Dubai, spent ten hours in the airport because South Africans couldn't get a visa on the fly, landed in Venice, and then proceeded to drive almost the entire coastline of Italy. Down the Adriatic, around Sicily, up through the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Pisa, Florence, Cinque Terre, then across to Chamonix and Paris, back through Switzerland, a couple of days at Lake Como, and finally, inevitably, Lake Garda. Five and a half thousand kilometres in three weeks. Camping, Airbnbs, one very memorable lemon farm above Minori with homemade limoncello and fireworks over the sea, a traffic fine from some entirely unsympathetic French gendarmes, and one of the best holidays I've ever had in my life.

Somewhere on the Adriatic coast, just south of Peschici in the first week, we'd driven past Lovers Arch (Arco degli Innamorati) in the white cliffs above the most improbable blue water I'd ever seen, and I'd spent the rest of the trip quietly searching for something that matched it. A perfect cove. Somewhere between the movie sets of The Talented Mr Ripley and The Count of Monte Cristo in my head. I never found it. We drove around Sicily looking. We drove up the west coast looking. We covered five and a half thousand kilometres of Mediterranean coastline. Lovers Arch near Peschici, it turned out, was probably as good as it was going to get. First week. Day five.

(Lovers Arch collapsed earlier this year, on Valentine's Day of all days. I'm very glad I saw it when I did.

The Lake That Doesn't Disappoint

We were buzzing by the time we reached Garda. Three weeks of constant movement, and now, finally, time to stop.

I'd been telling Loraine about Lake Garda since roughly our first date. I'm not sure she'd had much choice but to hear about it. So this was the moment - me introducing her to a place I'd been carrying around in my head for years, hoping it would do what I remembered it doing. And it didn’t disappoint.

We drove around most of the shore first, the way you do when you want to take something in properly before committing to it. We picked a hotel slightly north of Torri del Benaco on the east side of the lake and settled in for a few nights. After three weeks of campsites and Airbnbs and a lemon farm on an Amalfi mountainside, this felt like 5 star luxury. We drove up to a town named Castelletto, found an amazing lake side restaurant, and sat down like humans for a relaxing meal.

I never did find my perfect cove. But I swam in Lake Garda with swans instead of dolphins, and honestly, that was fine.

The clear water was exactly as I'd remembered. The light on the mountains, the restaurants, the easy rhythm of the place. It didn't disappoint on a single count, which is not always a given when you've spent years building something up in your head and then brought someone you love to see it. I never did find my perfect cove. But I swam in Lake Garda with swans instead of dolphins, and honestly, that was fine.

we started a conversation that has never really ended. What would it be like to live here?

We ran along the shore in the mornings. We had wine on a jetty in the evenings. We sat on the beach and did very little, which after five and a half thousand kilometres was for me the most difficult thing we'd done on the entire trip.

And somewhere in those few days, we started a conversation that has never really ended. What would it be like to live here? Not here specifically, but somewhere like this - Italy, the lakes, the mountains. We've been having that conversation for over a decade now. Lake Garda is still high on the list.

Any Excuse Will Do

By 2018 we were living in the UK, which meant Italy had quietly shifted from "ambitious expedition" to "long weekend." This is one of the better things about living in the UK.

Our friends Andrew and Caireen were flying over from South Africa for a proper Italian holiday. We planned to spend a few nights with them in Cinque Terre, and since they were coming across from Venice by train, Lake Garda was a natural place to meet en route. That was the official reason, anyway. The real reason is that we'll take any excuse to spend a night there.

The real reason is that we'll take any excuse to spend a night there.

We drove straight from Milan airport, pulled into Limone Sul Garda, and bought a bottle of wine and two wine glasses from a shop in the village. We had a plan: find a jetty, recreate the night from five years earlier, see what happened.

After dinner we took the bottle and the glasses down to the water. Just the two of us. Warm night, still lake, mountains doing their thing against the sky. We sat there and struck up our usual conversation of what it might be like to live here.

And then, right on cue, fireworks. Southern end of the lake. Big ones. Professional ones. The exact same thing had happened on the Amalfi Coast back in 2013, while sitting on a lemon farm terrace above Minori with a glass of wine and the sea laid out below us. Just like that time, I told Raine I'd arranged the show. Do fireworks happen every night in Italy, or is cupid genuinely looking out for me here? She didn't believe me again. But I could see her thinking about it.

Do fireworks happen every night in Italy, or is cupid genuinely looking out for me here?

The next morning we drove down to Peschiera del Garda to meet Andrew and Caireen. We walked around the village, then hired a speedboat and headed out onto the lake. Andrew and I had been quoting that scene from Spy at each other all morning. You know the one - Jason Statham squares his jaw, announces "sometimes a man's just got to go to sea," and roars off heroically across the water. The women watch him go. "Do you think we should tell him it's a lake?"

It was genuinely brilliant. We'd seen Garda from the shore plenty of times. From the water, looking back at the towns and the mountains rising behind them, it's a different thing entirely. A better angle, if anything.

I've now personally introduced Lake Garda to Loraine, to Andrew and Caireen, and to two other friends who went out on their own afterwards and loved it. They came back converted, as people tend to do. I'm doing my bit for Italian tourism, one eager first-timer at a time.

We spent the rest of the trip in Cinque Terre, which was what that whole trip was really about. We rented an Airbnb there for a few nights, did the shopping at the local market, cooked dinner in the apartment, sat up on the roof terrace with a drink in the evening. It was the first time the living-in-Italy conversation felt less like a fantasy and more like a practical possibility.

Portofino was a short drive away, all super yachts and prices that make you check you've read the menu correctly. Both places are stunning. Neither of them made me love Lake Garda any less.By 2018 I'd introduced Lake Garda to my wife, to two close friends, and to a handful of others who'd gone out on their own and come back converted. Seven years, three visits, and the lake had yet to put a foot wrong. I had a feeling that wasn't about to change.

(The story doesn't end here. Read Part 2: An Italian Lake You've Just Garda See Again.)

Lake Garda sits in northern Italy between Verona and Brescia, roughly an hour from both Milan and Verona airports. If you're going, give yourself more than a day. You won’t regret it.