Upper Lake tour

While the lower part of Lake Garda is very pretty, the upper part of the lake has stunning mountain scenery and is well worth a visit, so we booked ourselves onto the upper lake tour.  Firstly by Catamarano to Riva, then across the lake to Malcesine, back again to Limone this time by Batello and finally back to Gardone.  The lake is 51Km. long, and the routes taken by ferries are complicated, so the first part of the journey was an hour and a half, giving us an hour in Riva to have a snack and a look around.  Quite an attractive town, Riva is a main centre for water sports and how the Catamarano managed to miss all the surfboarders and sailing dinghies on the way in and out I shall never understand.

Malcesine was rather disappointing - lots of tacky souvenir-type shops, but the only place on the lake to take a cable-car ride up nearby Monte Baldo.  Limone was more interesting and had a pretty little church a little way up the hill from the town centre.  Largely because of its name and the fact that lemons were originally grown there in quantity, everybody assumes that the town is called 'Lemons'.  In fact it couldn't be further from the truth, as it was the northern-most point of the Roman Empire at one stage in history - 'limes' is Latin for 'frontier'.