This Blog Needs No Name | June

Daily: 3402 – Italy, day 7 – Lake Garda

There’s a lake, and it has boats, so we went for a boat tour. Like in Venice, we opted for an ordinary scheduled passenger boat going from town to town, rather than a sightseeing tour.

The boat took us to the small town of Limone, a little ways down the coast of Lake Garda. As the boat approached town, we were curious about the odd large stone structure that dominated the view. From the Internet I learned that these are old terraced lemon orchards. There are more of those, further up the hills. Some have been restored and turned into tourist sights.

The one closest to the harbour was all hidden behind walls and not open for visitors. There were a couple of small openings in the wall that allowed us to peek in, though.

We weren’t particularly interested in Limone itself – it was just an excursion – so after a brief walk and an ice cream, we took the next boat back to Riva del Garda.

The lake was full of people on all kinds of small craft, mostly windsurfers and small Optimist dinghies. In places the lake looked like a boat soup. I’m guessing there was some kind of sailing camp or course going on, or more likely several of these.

We also saw a kind of board that was new to us – a wing foil. Like a windsurfing board, but instead of a vertical sail attached to the board, these had a large free hand-held wing, and a hydrofoil under the board. They zoomed past like rockets.

By the way, I’ve generally been quite happy with the photos my phone camera takes, while my big camera is out of action, as long as I stay away from the zoom. I guess it switches to a different lens when I zoom, and then the picture quality becomes horrible, like you see in these last three photos. I tried taking a few pictures of flowers while we were hiking in the mountains, but had to throw out every single one of them.

We’ll have nice views for our drive back to Milan tomorrow – that’s our road snaking along the side of the lake.

Back in Riva del Garda, we walked around. The city centre isn’t very large so we could cover almost all of it.

When we didn’t know which way to go, we aimed for leather goods shops. I bought my favourite handbag here in Riva del Garda many years ago (and replaced it with an identical one) so I was hoping I could find something similar again. Small backpack handbags are hard to find. We saw all kinds of lovely bags, but not the type I wanted.

There was apparently a road biking competition that finished here today. We’ve been seeing loads of cyclists, especially around Cortina d’Ampezzo, and posters for bicycle events.

During our boat trip, we spotted a cable car going up to some kind of edifice halfway up the hill. When we ran out of promenade streets, we went to check that thing out. It turned out to be a ruined old bastion, with nice views back down towards the town.

When it was time for dinner, everyone was in agreement – there was no way we’d find anything that would beat Officina Verde, where we ate yesterday. So we went back for more. Since everyone had sampled everything, we knew exactly what we liked best, so instead of the set menus we picked our favourites.

“Something something with hints of the sea:”