Garda, Italy and The Residence Villa Rosa

Italy is a great country in which to spend your holiday. Pisa has its leaning tower, historic Rome has ancient buildings in abundance, but if you want just to relax, Lake Garda is just the place.
If you are looking for a self catering holiday apartment on Lake Garda, Italy, we would recommend looking no further than the ‘Residence Villa Rosa’ in Garda itself.

You can find details on www.residencevillarosa.com

It is a family run business and you couldn’t ask for a nicer, more helpful family.

If you really want to relax completely – you can forget about hiring a car and driving around on the wrong side of the road.

You can fly from the UK to Verona(Brescia) with Ryanair and take the Ryanair shuttle bus into Verona.

It stops at the Railway/Bus terminal in Verona and you need only to walk across the road to catch one of the frequent buses into Garda. Buy your ticket at the ticket office opposite the shuttle stop. Don’t drag your luggage onto the bus, put it in the storage in the side of the bus. The are several different bus routes to Garda bus station– you can take any of them.

Once you arrive and are settled , one of the family are happy to drive you to the local large
supermarket , drop you off and pick you and your shopping up when you phone.

The Villa Rosa is only a kilometre from the lake. As you can imagine, it is uphill from the lake but it is an easy, gentle slope – NOT a steep climb! There is also a free bus service that runs from outside the premises into the town.

Things you should know:
Credit cards are not as widely used in Italy as in the UK although are accepted by most restaurants, jewellers etc but NOT the supermarkets (in Garda at least). However, the nearest ATM machine is only 800 metres away – pick your bank carefully and they won’t even charge for taking money out.

You can’t at present get details of room availability instantly on the Internet but remember that this is a family business, not a big conglomerate. If you e-mail you will get a reply next day and the reasonable prices make waiting well worth while!

Another benefit is that Sterling cheques are acceptable for the deposit (most places will only take Euro cheques) so although you can’t pay on the Net, your only additional cost is the stamp.

Without a car, you can still get all around the lakeside towns by bus or boat. Venice and Milan also make an easy day trip by train from Peschiera
– See map on www.gardalake.it/garda-map.html

Our only worry in recommending Villa Rosa is that once you’ve been there you’ll want to go back again and again and we'll find it more difficult to get in!

Leslie & Nadine Peakall