Lake Garda has become one of the most famous European lakes and is highly frequented by tourists from all over the world. Situated in northern Italy, Lake Garda sits between Milan and Venice. The dynamic topography of this alpine region is thought to have been formed by glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age.
The biggest lake in Italy, Lake Garda has an impressive surface area of nearly 400 squared kilometers – so if you’re planning on driving the whole way around the lake as we did, you’ll need a few days here!
We spent 3 days travelling around this beautiful lake to see if it lived up to its reputation. One key thing we learnt: you can never trust the weatherman. Unfortunately a lot of our time on Lake Garda was shrouded in cloudy grey skies with accents of thunderstorm and gallons of rain. Those of you who enjoy taking snapshots of your holidays know that this makes for less than ideal photography conditions! However, the grey skies didn’t stop us from enjoying some of the beautiful lakeside towns and stopping for some lovely Italian food. We even got the occasional breakthrough of sunshine!
To travel around the lake, we followed one of the maps in the Eyewitness travel guide ‘Back Roads – Northern & Central Italy’. I’d definitely recommend this book if you’re intending to do a lot of driving in Italy!
The SP38 Porto to Pieve road is a beautiful scenic drive, although not for the fainthearted!
Many people have videoed themselves driving (you can check it out on Youtube). The winding, uphill, narrow roads take you to villages perched on the hillside overlooking the spectacular lake. It’s definitely worth paying a visit to the village of Pieve, full of beautiful stone-built houses and with beautiful views across the lake – even in bad weather. Here we stopped a while for a coffee and macaron watching a storm pass over the lake.
We spent the remainder of our time in Lake Garda driving around the remainder of the lake (in a clockwise fashion), stopping off at little towns and villages along the way. Make sure you stop to visit the Castello at Arco at the very top of the lake!
Lake Garda, our verdict: Beautiful, despite the rain but very busy with tourists. On our European road trip alone we saw many other beautiful lakes which just as much character as Lake Garda with way less people (Check out previous posts on Lake Brienz in Switzerland and Lake Iseo in Italy). However, the lake is still a picturesque escape and is a lovely location for a holiday. If you manage to take a day away from the lakeside and venture up into the hills, you can find picturesque villages with authentic Italian charm, away from the crowds!
We would love to visit Lake Garda again – hopefully with better weather so that we can further explore the character and charm of the surrounding villages. We’d also love to get some better snapshots of the views looking less grey and less impeded by clouds!
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