travelswithalice

July 20, 2005

Villa di Gargnano on Lake Garda

We’re on the Easy Jet flight from London to Milan; there are no assigned seats so it’s first come, first served. Having boarded late, I count myself lucky to have a front-row seat but Stuart is squeezed into a centre seat way back near the tail-end of the plane.

“Would your partner like to change places with me so you can sit together?” The suggestion is so graciously made I turn to the man in the window seat and look at him with a mixture of gratitude and surprise. What a nice man. And so Stuart and I get to hold hands on the plane. Nice start.

In Milan, our Avis car is a nice surprise too: a sweet little silver Mercedes, nearly brand-new. I guess when you make up your mind to enjoy yourself the universe works with you.

We run into the nice man again while waiting for our car. He’s a history professor on his usual commute from London where he works to Lake Como where he lives. “Have a happy stay in Italy,” he says with a courtly bow. And on that happy note, our perfect holiday begins.

It's a beautiful but dizzying drive to Valerio’s Hotel du Lac in Gargnano on Lake Garda. He didn’t have a lake view for us so we went to his parents’ Hotel Gardenia, renovated and looking very smart with newly installed balconies and freshly restored murals.

Dinner at Valerio’s that night was nostalgic and intimate. We had the restaurant all to ourselves so we moved our table around to face the lake more squarely, opened the windows, and then dimmed the lights, like we owned the place.

Next day lunch at Gardenia was pleasant but less picturesque.

It rained the second night, so at Osteria Restauro around the corner, the diners who had optimistically taken outside tables followed us more sensible types into the tiny, undecorated room inside. Dinner was cozy.

The following day, we took the boat to Malcesine for lunch. At the Pizzeria Mignon, we had a table on the little bridge connecting the two upstairs dining rooms.

Spring flowers ran riot around us and a stray white linen table napkin was caught in a shrub, blown by the wind from a laundry line above. Limoncello was on the house.

On our last evening on the lake, we had dinner at Baia d'Oro, a five minute walk from Valerio's. The evening started on just the right note with a glass of chilled prosecco.

Labels: gargnano, italy, one long summer

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones  # July 20, 2005

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