Postcards from the past: Brian McGilloway on his family holidays to Lake Garda

Writer, Brian McGilloway, reflects on how a journey to his beloved Lake Garda brought him a true sense of home

Sat, 27 Mar, 2021 - 08:00

If nostalgia is homesickness for the past, it seems strange to think of this in the context of holidays. For homesickness, by its very nature relates to home, and holidays are an escape from that same place. But for me, the best holidays are those where you feel at home. Where you belong, not just in terms of surroundings but in the sense of the place, the people, the attitude. For me, Italy’s Garda region is just such a home from home.

Part of this is because when I was eight, my family took our first ever foreign trip: a coach journey through central Europe to northern Italy, ending up at the resort of Lido De Jesolo on the Venetian coast. I still wonder at the sanity of my parents attempting such a trip with young children — but we loved it. We found our own entertainment on the bus and saw a huge number of places and countries due to the number of rest stops. I still recall the night we arrived: July 11, 1982. I know this with such accuracy, as it was the night of the World Cup final. Our Italian coach driver watched the game on the small TV screen at the front of the coach while negotiating the curves of the Dolomites. We arrived at the resort just after the final whistle, with Italy having beaten West Germany 3-1. The streets filled with jubilation. In my memories, that holiday was marked by crazy golf, swimming, watermelon, beaches, laughter. I loved it and loved the sense of being somewhere new, but among family — a sense that I have ever since associated with Italy.

The appeal of Lake Garda lies in the fact that now with a family of six of my own, finding somewhere that will appeal to everyone’s interests is tough. My wife likes leisurely holidays on the beach. My older kids want to be able to go fishing or exploring. The younger children want amusement parks and entertainment. Perhaps due to that first coach holiday through Europe, I like to drive, to wander, to see different places each day. Added to that, I’m a coeliac, so I need somewhere that can cater for a gluten-free diet. We all want nice food, decent weather, mellow evenings, ice cream. Lake Garda, we discovered, offers us all that and more.

Gardaland Theme Park in Castelnuovo Del Garda. Three million people visit the park on a yearly basis.

We’d been on several package holidays to Spain and Majorca when the kids were younger, but none quite catered for everyone. So it was with that we decided in 2012 to go to Gardaland, an amusement park near Lake Garda. We booked into the park’s hotel but were glad to realise when we first arrived that it is set some distance from the park, so isn’t as manic or noisy as we initially feared. It’s a little distance from the lake, so we also hired a car — something which proved vital to really explore the local area.

Gardaland Hotel was beautiful. We’d booked a family suite which, in fact, was a large apartment. The dining area was spacious and offered a decent menu range and buffet dining. While the younger kids tended to default to chicken nuggets, our older boys took the opportunity to try foods they’d not normally eat, particularly from the extensive seafood menu. The gluten-free range was plentiful. It was perfect for a young family with diverse culinary tastes!

The hotel amenities included several pools, activities in the evening for the children in the main courtyard as well as frequent visits from the park’s characters, to entertain the younger children. It was, unsurprisingly, very much geared towards younger children, but that was fine for us.

Gardaland itself is, in many ways, like every other amusement park. That said, there was plenty for all the kids to do, which is useful when the age gap between eldest and youngest is eight years. We had tickets that allowed us to go in and out as we liked, and which also covered visits to the local Sea Life aquarium. We also discovered a small safari park in the hills above the lake which the kids loved.

Houses on the square in the colourful italian town of Burano near Venice.

During the course of the week, we drove further afield too, exploring the small towns around the lake, one by one. On one such night, we visited Lazise and instantly fell in love. A small walled town, it makes full use of the lakefront, with cafés and ice cream parlours lining a promenade along the shorefront. Groups of people ambled along in the soft evening heat, watching the sun set on a lake that looked like molten gold. There was no sense of haste, no harrying shouts from market stalls or restaurateurs touting for business.

Everyone moved at their own pace, a pace set by the slow breaths of the water lapping on the rocky shoreline. My wife, Tanya, turned to me and said: ‘Someday we should buy a house here. Imagine living like this.’ Someday, we hope to.

We’ve made other forays over our visits since and have found new places, tried new things, and learned handy tips, such as flying into Verona rather than Milan Bergamo to shorten the onward drive to the lake. Following the recommendation of a friend, we took the lake boat, a hop-on-hop-off affair that allowed us to explore the extreme northern edges of the lake.

We hired a speed boat ourselves and spent a morning out on the lake, allowing the kids to indulge both their desire to fish (with admittedly limited success) and to steer a boat (holding the wheel with appropriate adult supervision and no other vessels in sight!) We also drove into Verona for a day. We all wanted to go shopping and I wanted to see the sights associated with Romeo and Juliet. Verona, a medieval town with a huge Roman amphitheatre (now used as an arena for concerts and opera) at its heart, provided more than enough to keep us busy for the day.

Venice lies a 90-minute drive and a subsequent boat crossing away from Garda. It was crowded when we went, not least because we arrived at Festa del Redentore (the Redeemer’s Festival), a festival marking the end of the plague in 1577, during which all the city’s boats go out into the harbour and a fireworks display is set off over the city. It was a memorable day, though a little challenging trying to find our way back off the island. There was also a terrific thunderstorm as we headed back in the boat, as if the heavens were trying to outdo the simultaneous municipal display.

La Bella Vita. The relaxing pace of evening life in the region.

Murano island, also in the Venetian lagoon, was similarly busy mid-summer but an interesting experience and quite a beautiful spot. My wife had been given several pieces of Murano glass by her mum some years back and was keen to see where it was made. The skill and speed of the glassblowers, who offer hourly displays of their craft, was breathtaking.

For one final trip, we headed to Lido di Jesolo, primarily because I wanted to see if I could remember it. The place is still busy and family-friendly, though a little dated perhaps. One clear memory of my childhood holiday there was going to the crazy golf course along the main street. So, it was with some surprise that we found it still there, still open and seemingly unchanged since 1982. In the course of booking in for a game with my family, I mentioned to the young operator that I had first been there more than 30 years earlier. He explained that the man who had owned the course back then still visited daily.

By the time we’d finished our game, the former owner had arrived, the new one having phoned him and explained what I’d told him. And so, with my own children, I met again a man whose crazy golf course had helped cement my happiest childhood holiday memory — a memory of family and time shared happily together — which is what every good holiday should be after all. He didn’t pretend to remember us nor would I have known him, though once introduced he seemed instantly familiar, such is the trick of memory. But in that moment, past and present came full circle and I had an enduring sense of being home.