Lake summer holidays

richardw

I've never been on a summer holiday by a lake and was wondering if they can sometimes be really peaceful compared to a coastal holiday.

There's Lake Bled, Balaton, Garda, other Italian lakes, Swiss lakes.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

We like swimming, great views and good value local restaurants.

bcl999

When in Milan years ago, I spent a day at Stresa on Lake Maggiore and have been promising I would return ever since. It's expensive though.

BenL

I went to Balaton a few years ago. We went out on Ryanair from Stansted cheaply and we stayed in this house http://www.houses.hu/abrahamhegy/abh_2022/.

362Euro low season and high season is 460Euro.

We hired a car from the airport to get about.

It was cheap to eat and drink and we found plenty of stuff to do when we got there. The lake was very nice and we drove around quite a lot of it and caught the ferry across. There are outdoor spas, castles, caves and all the usual stuff for tourists. Balaton is popular with mainland europeans for holidays e.g germans etc

The north side of the lake where we were staying is nicer than the south.

Views aren't too bad either

Enterprise_1701C

We went to Lake Garda a few years back. It was absolutely wonderful, beautiful views, great local restaurants. I've been trying to remember exactly where, but it was a while ago

One thing I do remember is we were not far from Lazise, and I have an iconic photo of the lakefront there with the sun setting, and I recall we were sitting in a very nice ice cream parlour eating absolutely delicious banana splits!!

Sarah2100

In my opinion swiss lakes are among the best in the world, I have been 4 times with my family and the veiws and sheer cleaness of the air and water is amazing, highly recommened, hope this helps

Sarah

markandkate

Hi both Garda and Maggiore are beautiful. There are ferries that go up and down the lakes visting the different towns. Most of the activity take place lakeside and there are also buses so you can get around easliy. Nightlife is very low key and as others have said it can get expensive. If booking a package you may want to consider half board. Yo can swim in the lakes but it is not very warm but many of the hotels have pools.

The Italian lakes are also good for trips to Verona, Milan and Venice. If you hire a car fly into Milan Malpensa and you can be lakside in an hour. WE stayed at La Portella apartments high over the lake Garda in a small village

Mardrew

Last July we flew to Venice and had (IIRC) 5 nights there and then got the train, followed by a taxi, to Garda and had 5 nights there. We loved Garda and could have spent longer there. It felt so peaceful and the views were stunning. I think we had one day of not doing very much apart from going to the large local market; one day we walked along the lake front to Bardolino, another day we got the ferry to Sirmionie and another day we caught the local bus up to Malcesnie and took the cable car up to the top of Monte Baldo. It's an area we will definitely return to as there was so much of it that we didn't get chance to see.