A Summer Drive Through Barcelona, Lake Garda, and the Austrian Alps

Three countries, one long drive

In June 2019 we drove a route that took us from Barcelona all the way to the Austrian lake district, with two stops on Lake Garda in between. It’s the kind of trip that only really works if you’re comfortable with genuinely long driving legs, since the distance from Spain’s Mediterranean coast to northern Italy is substantial before you’ve even started thinking about Austria. We started in Barcelona at the ibis Styles Barcelona City Bogatell, using the city as a few days of urban time before the road-trip portion properly began.

The long haul east

Getting from Barcelona to Lake Garda means crossing the width of southern France and most of northern Italy, and it’s not a drive to underestimate — this was the single longest stretch of the whole trip and we treated it as its own travel day rather than trying to combine it with sightseeing along the way. It’s worth being honest with yourself about pacing on a trip like this: the temptation is to cram in the scenic stops between two far-apart cities, but a long driving day is tiring enough on its own once you’re a few decades past being able to shake off eight hours behind the wheel without a proper rest. Splitting a drive like this across two days with an overnight stop somewhere along the French or Italian Riviera is a reasonable alternative if you’d rather not do it in one long push.

Two sides of Lake Garda

We split our Garda time between two towns that turned out to be genuinely different versions of the same lake. First was Riva del Garda at the northern tip, where we stayed at Hotel Royal. Riva sits where the lake meets steep mountains, and it’s long been popular with windsurfers thanks to the reliable winds that funnel down the valley — the scenery here is dramatic in a way that feels almost alpine, cliffs rising straight out of the water.

From there we moved south to Sirmione, staying at San Lorenzo Apartments. Sirmione is a completely different kind of place — a narrow peninsula jutting out into the flatter southern end of the lake, anchored by a moated medieval castle and a set of Roman ruins at its tip. Where Riva felt mountainous and active, Sirmione felt historic and compact, a town built almost entirely around its own promontory. Doing both in the same trip gave us a much better sense of the lake as a whole than picking just one town would have.

Finishing in Austria’s lake district

From Lake Garda we made the shorter hop north into Austria, ending the trip in Faak am See at Gasthof Pension Popolari. Lake Faak sits in Carinthia, Austria’s southernmost state, and it’s a genuinely popular summer swimming lake among Austrians — warmer than most alpine lakes thanks to its relatively shallow, sheltered setting. After the intensity of the Barcelona-to-Garda drive, finishing on a quiet Carinthian lake felt like exactly the right way to close out the trip.

Why this route makes sense

Laid end to end, this itinerary traces a rough diagonal from the Mediterranean up into the Alps, and each stop offered something the others didn’t — Barcelona’s city energy, Riva’s mountain-lake drama, Sirmione’s history and calmer pace, and Faak am See’s quiet finish. It’s not a trip we’d recommend rushing; the driving alone asks a lot, and the reward is really in taking each stop at its own pace rather than treating any of them as a quick overnight.

Practical notes

One real advantage of a route like this is that it stays entirely within the Schengen area, so there are no border stops or passport checks between Spain, France, Italy, and Austria — you simply drive across each line. That said, don’t let the lack of border friction fool you into underestimating the actual driving time; a trip covering this much ground needs real day-by-day planning, with the Barcelona-to-Garda leg in particular deserving its own dedicated day rather than being squeezed in around anything else.

[Editor’s note: add what this drive actually meant to you both — the long stretches behind the wheel, the moment Riva’s mountains came into view, whatever you remember most — and swap in your own photos when ready.]