Why no mention of Lake Garda in Rick Steve's Italy 2013?

Jim, the RS guidebooks include what Rick likes; lots of places aren't mentioned. On the other hand, other guidebooks don't go into as much depth about the places mentioned.

I use Lonely Planet guidebooks and regional/provincial tourism sites for more info.

I have been to all three major lakes and many smaller ones, but except for Lake Como my visits were a long time ago. I will defer to Roberto and others about the lakes.

Garda is lovely, especially the north end. We included three nights there on our trip to Venice some years ago. It is best to have a car.

Rick doesn't try to be comprehensive in his guidebooks. Virtually every other guidebook does, which is always a good idea to pair Rick's books with another series. I like the DK Eyewitness Travel books as well as the National Geographic guidebooks as complements.

We went to Sirmione on Lake Garda last year in May on a day trip from Verona and found it to be packed with humanity. Much more enjoyable was the walk up to the Grotto of Catullus and exploring around there. FWIW, Garda is apparently very popular with Germans, presumably in part because of its closer location to Germany.

Garda is my wife's favorite lake. I have a weakness for lake Maggiore but Garda is a close 2nd. The best part, to me, is the north lake (Limone, Malcesine, Riva, Torri del Benaco and all those villages up there). Sirmione, on the south shore, is a pretty medieval village, but it's like Disneyland, packed with tourists. So I take friends there for a few hours, to say they've seen it, but I wouldn't stay there. I've always had a car at the lake the several times I have been, but there are also buses and boats. Not sure how convenient though, since they may not be that frequent. Also with a car you can venture to the very closeby Dolomites or Valpolicella (wine).
If you plan to pair a lake with a Venice visit, obviously Garda is the best choice, being so close.

We stayed in Malsecine (thanks to Roberto's suggestion) driving from the Dolomites in September and loved it. Not crowded, stayed across the lakeside road from the water. Great view and a quick walk to a little park where the paragliders land. Under the road tunnel to the beach. When we left for Verona traveling south along the lake, we were amazed at how touristy it got the farther south we drove. Very beautiful.

Re-reading, I see you asked for comments from those who have been to Garda and one or more of the other lakes. So I assume you are asking for comparison. We have spent three nights each in Malcesine on Garda and Varenna on Como, in both places in nice hotel rooms with full lake view. While both lakes are very nice, I prefer Garda. It has much more to offer the active person---hiking, swimming, paragliding, windsurfing. Monte Baldo rises up 5000 feet behind Malcescine; you can ride a gondola up or hike up as we did. Great views from the top. And there are nice beaches right by the town. Try Hotel Castello, which has its own beach, and sits right below the old castle.

Malcescine itself has a charming oldtown area with narrow cobbled streets

Swimming in Lago di Como is somewhat controversial. Some say it is too polluted; others say the northern reaches, like Varenna, are OK. The water right at Varenna did not look clean enough to tempt me, but I did swim on the other side, at Menaggio. We actually ferried over there to rent sea kayaks, but there were none available ( all rented out) so we swam instead. There are a couple of short hikes at Varenna but for the most part the area is too built up. I should also mention that it was very hazy the day we arrived in Varenna, and all the next day; so hazy there were no views. Fortunately we had pre-booked a cooking class for the mid-day, and with all the haze we didn't mind being indoors. I don't know how often this happens ( we were there in June) but I note that RS refers to "lazy, hazy" Lake Como in one of his videos.

I am not sure what Michael intends with his comment about Garda attracting German visitors. It is true, especially of the north lake. At Malcescine you will see some signs or menus in both German and Italian, as well as some hotel websites. The Germans come for the sporty activities on offer, especially the windsurfing. We spent a very pleasant evening talking to a friendly couple from Hamburg in a wine bar.

Lake Garda, aka "Il Mare dei Tedeschi" (The Germans' Sea).
Actually there are now just as many Dutch as Germans. It's the closest large body of water coming from the Brenner pass. Some Germans simply can't resist the temptation and never make it as far as the Adriatic, the real Sea. But don't worry. Germans don't bite. They just finish all the beer sold in town, especially when they win at the World Cup.

Jim,

I don't have a definite answer for your title question, but I suspect there are a couple of reasons. First, there's no way RS or his staff could possibly provide a comprehensive description of every location in Europe, especially since the guidebooks are updated every year. It would be an enormous and very costly undertaking to return to every location to do yearly updates, and the guidebooks would each be about a foot thick. They seem to focus on the places that the majority of North American travellers would be most interested in visiting, and limit the number of locations to a comfortable level.

I've been to lakes Como, Maggiore and Garda, with the most recent being Lago di Garda in September. Of the three, Garda was my least favourite and I'll provide a few thoughts on my reasons.

As Roberto and others have noted, Lake Garda is very popular with German, Austrian and Dutch tourists (as well as the rest of us from other parts of the world), and as a result some places are extremely crowded to the point of being unpleasant (at least IMO). Due to the geography and layout of the towns, getting to some of them is somewhat awkward, whether by train or car. Of the towns on the south end, Peschiera del Garda is easy to access by train, as is Desenzano. If only using public transit, getting to Sirmione will require a Taxi or whatever. If travelling by car, finding parking may be an issue in some places, especially on weekends when the traffic can be in "gridlock" and the car parks full.

Of the three locations that I visited on Lago di Garda, I found Peschiera to be very pleasant and scenic with the flower-lined canals, and a location I'd like to return to for a few days at some point in the future. OTOH, my visit to Sirmione was extremely crowded and a dreadful experience, and I don't ever plan to return there! It seemed like nothing more than a huge and chaotic shopping mall with restaurants from one end to the other. Possibly things would have been different if I had visited on a less crowded day, but overall I wasn't impressed. I found Limone sul Garda to be a beautiful and scenic town at the north end and while I enjoyed seeing it, I didn't find many things there to pique my interest or prompt a return visit.

I found both the food and service at many of the restaurants and other facilities in all three locations to be substandard compared to other locations I've been to in Italy and other places in Europe. I'm generally quite easy going and willing to tolerate a lot, but what I encountered in the three places I visited on Lago di Garda this year left me with a decidedly negative impression.

One point I'd like to add is that based on the excellent recommendations provided by Roberto, I'm willing to give the north end of Lago di Garda another try. I had wanted to spend some time in Malcesine, but I ran out of time this year so wasn't able to get there. As I usually prefer to travel via public transit when possible, that will be an easy location to reach without a car, using train to Peschiera and then boat (I believe the Bus is also an option).

Based on the comments from others in this Thread, some people really enjoy Lago di Garda. My experiences there in September were more negative than positive, so it's not a place that will be high on my "places to return to" list.

Good luck with your choice!

As others have noted, Rick tries to be selective, not comprehensive in the destinations he covers. To help you avoid get maxed out on too many lakes (and travel between them), or too many museums, or churches, etc., he covers his favorites, which he considers top priorities for a first month or two of visiting Italy. Some destinations that are popular resort and relaxation spots for Italians don't provide the sightseeing bang-for-buck that he thinks American travelers want, or the art-and-history angle that really makes Italy different from the USA.

As you can tell from the various comments, it's really a matter of personal preference. I think all those Prealpine lakes are beautiful (Prealpi are the mountains that come before the Alps mountain range). However personal experiences might cause people to prefer one over the other. Ken didn't have a great experience at Lake Garda last September. I had an even worse experience at lake Como many years ago when I was living in Italy that I never went back. But I'll give lake Como a second chance hopefully next summer when I go back to Italy. I tried to check online in some forums which lake Italians prefer. Everybody agrees they are all beautiful, but when it comes to choosing the top, the results are equally divided.

So I think you should visit for yourself with the one you feel like visiting (or maybe all the major ones), and fall in love with your personal favorite. They are all beautiful, so you can't go wrong. However, if in your trip you fly to Venice to visit Venice, lake Garda makes the most sense logistically, because the others are farther out of the way.

Sirmione is the most popular destination at lake Garda probably because of the La Scala Castle and the Roman ruins. But also because it's very accessible from the freeway and the train line, and it's closer to big population centers (like Verona and Brescia and all the cities along the A4 freeway). But with popularity comes crowds. Very big crowds.