From Lake Garda to the Dolomites
by André Koester, Luxury Travel Advisor
My husband and I take a week-long trip alone every July. It’s very good for the marriage given the fact that we have four young sons. This year, we decided to explore some parts of Italy we’d never been to: Lake Garda and the Dolomite Mountains.
Our first stop was Lake Garda. We flew direct from NYC to Venice, and spent our first day exploring Verona since it is halfway between Venice and Lake Garda. Verona is a charming, medieval city with narrow streets and beautiful architecture. There is a huge Roman arena right in the center of the city that has a full schedule of evening operas all summer long. The highlight of our day was seeing the opera ‘Carmen’, under the stars.
Our next few days were spent enjoying beautiful Lake Garda, which is the largest of the Italian Lakes, but not nearly as well known as Lake Como. We stayed at Villa Feltrinelli, a gorgeous 20-room hotel on the water. It has a lovely pool, a wonderful spa, and service that is beyond compare. By our second day there, all the staff knew our coffee order for breakfast and our preferred drink for cocktails. Even though it was difficult to leave Villa Feltrinelli, there are several charming towns to explore on Lake Garda that can be reached by car or by chartering a boat. We chose the latter and loved visiting Salo for its stylish shops, Sirmione for its dramatic Roman architecture, and Isola di Garda, a private island in the center of the lake and the home of a stunning palazzo. There are lots of great restaurants where you can dock for an alfresco seafood lunch and we loved jumping off the boat for a swim.
Next on our itinerary was San Cassiano, in the Dolomites. The Dolomites are about an hour and a half drive north from Lake Garda. They are the most dramatic, beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen and a great destination, both summer and winter. Summer activities include hiking, biking, rock climbing, and a type of climbing called via ferrata. Via ferrata involves climbing while clipped into steel cables, ladders, and other anchors that are affixed to the mountain, allowing those not as experienced to hike dramatic ledges and climb vertical walls. It was my husband’s suggestion to go to the Dolomites, and I was a bit hesitant as I am not really the outdoorsy type, but I ended up loving our time there. We would hike in the mornings, enjoying amazing vistas at every turn, and follow our hikes with lunch at a rifugio. Rifugio is translated as a “mountain refuge”, but is really a cozy restaurant/inn on the mountain with delicious food and good wine. What made it even better was we could take a cable car or chairlift up and hike down if we weren’t feeling up for a major trek. One day, we explored tunnels in the mountains (some as long as a kilometer) that were made by Italians and Austrians during WWI, as that area was a major front during the war. We had a great hiking guide on several of our days who showed us the most scenic routes and explained much of the WWI history. He wanted us to try via ferrata, but we told him we’d bring our sons back to do that! He informed us that the Dolomites are incredibly popular with families – both children and teens love the climbing and the thrill of via ferrata. We ate as well for dinner as we did for lunch, as there are numerous Michelin-starred restaurants scattered throughout the region. Our hotel, the Rosa Alpina, was a highlight that manages to be cozy and chic at the same time.
After a great week, we had a 2.5-hour drive to Venice airport for our direct flight home to New York. We promised each other that we’d come back to both locales – a successful trip in my book!