Favorite towns around Lake Garda?

We are driving from Barolo to Garda, on Lake Garda in late September. After Garda we are driving back to Milan for a few days.

Lots of options, but any suggested itinerary for the road trip to and from Garda?

Thanks,

there are many ferries between towns around Lago di Garda. Only two ferries btw east and west can take cars, but you can see the opposite bank view without taking the ferry anyway. The idea ferry is btw north and south towns.

Some ferries allow bikes, but not all roads are safe for bikers, especially my partner has terrible eyesight, so he can only bike on places without much traffic, or on specific bike road.

the longest ferry btw south and north takes more than 4.5 hours, and can't take our car. So round trip would take 9 hours, which is not doable. So we can only choose a shorter ferry to see the view on the two sides of the lake. Which ferry has the best view and worth a round trip ferry?

Hello again,

It's 90 days until I (hopefully) visit the lake and I always like to be prepared before I travel.

I've looked around at the different excursion companies but they seem be general Lake Garda companies and some of the trips I look at are not available from Limone.

Does anybody know of the best ones to use from this location? Just get an idea of what I can do, how much it costs and possibly book.

Many thanks

Mark

Hi,

Looking into putting together a great itinerary for 10days this September flying in and out of Verona. We’ve been to Venice and Bologna so not too fussed about going there. We would like to go to lake Garda for a few days, the Dolomites for a few days + visit a few vineyards. Our interests are culture, scenery + food/drink.

Any suggestions are most welcome as the options appear to be endless.

After cancelling our 2020 Italy trip, I've just booked a trip for spring 2022. We fly into Venice in late April and will be in the country for 21 nights before leaving from Rome. I've booked accommodations online but everything is cancellable so I'd love to know you suggest any changes to my itinerary. And I have a few questions. Any input would be much appreciated as I've never been to Italy!

Here's what I've booked:

3 nights Venice - Wander, see Doge's palace & St. Mark's Square

3 nights in Sirmione, Lake Garda - explore Roman ruins, drive around lake, maybe boat trip to Isola del Garde

3 Nights in Florence - Museums & sights. Rent car when leaving & drive to Montepulciano via Chianti.

3 Nights in Montepulciano - Wine tasting, explore hill towns in Tuscany (& maybe hot springs?)

4 Nights in Sorrento (day trips to Capri & Amalfi Coast & maybe Pompeii, but that would be all the days and I want to just relax & wander in Sorrento too)

4 Nights in Rome - Colosseum, Vatican, and maybe day trip to Tivoli or Ninfa Gardens (though my husband won't be that excited about the latter so may skip it)

Does this look like a good number of days / nights in each place?

Also, I have a few other questions... From Venice to Sirmione - Would I be better off to simply take the train from Venice to Desenzano and rent a car there, meaning I could drop it at the end of my Sirmione stay and not pay one-way charge? Or rent a car in Venice and drive to Desenzano? And when we leave Montepulciano to go to Sorrento, am I better off dropping the car in Chiusi and taking train from there to Sorrento, or driving back to Florence & dropping it there, taking the high-speed traing?

Or should I re-order the whole trip, driving from Venice to Sirmione and then to Montepulciano, then take the car back to Florence, spend 3 nights there and then train to Sorrento?

I've noticed that a lot of accommodations are booking up already for next spring so if my itinerary isn't logical, I want to switch it around now while there's lots of options. I know there's plenty of time for booking cars & trains, but does the order make sense? Thanks in advance for any input!!

We are planning a 3 Day Trip to Lake Garda at the beginning of September - so just a few days away. This will be our first time there. What are your thoughts on staying in Riva vs. Desenzano? We have narrowed it down to two accommodations, but would appreciate some insight which town you would recommend. We have a car but would prefer not to drive multiple hours each day. Thank you!

Group of 7 including 3 teenagers traveling at the end of June 2022. Flying into Venice and spending 2.5 days there and will finish the trip with 4 days in Rome. Half of the group has been to Italy before, 1st trip to Europe for the other half.

One member of the group wants to meet up with a friend in Milan for a day.

Thinking it might be nice to spend a few days at Lake Como for these reasons -

Would be an easy trip back and forth to Milan for the friend meet up.

Nice relaxation time with swimming, boating, laying out by the lake etc.

Lake Como is gorgeous!

If you were traveling from VCE to Rome and had 3 or 4 days AND needed to spend 1 day in Milan where would you go? Am I on the right track or should we be looking elsewhere?

Hi people,

Planning on visiting both Lake Como and then going into northern Lombardy (Chiavenna as a base, maybe), but not sure how to arrange it or how to manage the car rental in the most efficient way. Our rough itinerary so far looks like this:

- Day 1: Coming from Tuscany, arriving at Lake Como around noon or 2/3 PM (overnight in Varenna)

- Day 2: Around Lake Como, maybe visiting Bellagio / Varenna / hiking around the area.

- Day 3: Around Lake Como, maybe visiting Bellagio / Varenna / hiking around the area.

- Day 4: Going from Varenna to Chiavenna, sightseeing around the area

- Day 5: Visiting Soglio (Switzerland) and maybe other small towns close to Chiavenna.

- Day 6: From Chiavenna to Tirano or Pontresina to take the Bernina Express up to Chur, so we might be able to visit some towns enroute to Pontresina/Tirano during the morning as the Bernina Express leaves Tirano at around 2 PM. We will probably go from Chur to Luzern which is our next step for a couple of nights instead of staying in Chur.

I am not worried about the Lake Como leg of the trip, but how would you arrange the trip from Day 4? We weren´t planning to have a car initially because we would do Lake Como and then move into the Ticino (based in Locarno) in Switzerland. However, we discovered how beautiful the area around Chiavenna is and we are now gravitating towards doing that instead of Ticino, before moving into Lucerne (Bernina Express seems to be an interesting option to connect northern tip of Italy (Tirano) with Chur and then going into Luzern for a long but relaxing day).

Big problem is that there doesn´t seem to be a rental car return place that would suit our itinerary without getting into astronomical fees or a lot of unnecessary driving (or returning in Switzerland which also increases fees), any advice on that and how our rough itinerary looks? We would like to keep unnecessary travel as much as possible and minimize super expensive costs for the car rental.

Thank you!

We have 2 or 3 days for some hilltop towns. Out of these which would be the top 4 or 5 must see?

Cortona

Spello

Civita di bagnoregio

Orvieto

Pienza

San gimignano

Volterra

We don’t want a big town like Siena. From my research they seem to be the top seven in the area unless I missed one and if I did could you please let me know.

The ones I was thinking about seeing are

Cortona

Civitia di bagnoregio

Orvieto

San gimignano

Volterra

We tend to move fast depending on the size of the town. Maybe this is too many for the 2 maybe 3 days?

We just don’t wanna make the mistake of seeing too many towns that are too similar we really want to see different looking towns if that makes sense.

My family and I (3 people in total) are flying into Rome on the evening of July 28. From there, we will be spending all of the 29th in Rome and then driving down south in the evening. We will be spending 2 days on Amalfi Coast and eventually making our drive to Puglia on July 31. We have a masseria booked near the town of Grottaglie from the 31st until August 6 (a beautiful but isolated masseria that we stayed at before Covid but it's pretty far from the major cities). However, despite the beauty that our stay offers, what is worrying us is that we have already visited the main attractions and towns near our masseria on our trip to Puglia pre-Covid). On our last trip we visited:

- Lecce, Nardo, Taranto

- Ostuni

- Matera

- Alberobello

- Bari

We have included Monopoli and Brindisi in our itinerary as of yet. We would love to explore new places and towns that we have not seen before. Please give us any recommendations where we should go and what to include on our itinerary. Would love if anyone could share any hidden gems around our location. We would also appreciate if anyone can share beautiful beaches around the region.

Thank you in advance!