When you are after a literal example of “living the dream”, being handed a glass of perfectly chilled prosecco while on board a 1961 Riva timber speedboat that’s skimming across Lake Como on a cloudless day is hard to beat. So breathtaking is the combination of the boat’s streamlined retro beauty, the water’s otherworldly glimmering, the magnificent Swiss Alp backdrop and the passing parade of glorious villas and picturesque, hill-hugging towns that it’s hard not to believe you’ve fallen down some kind of Alice-like rabbit hole and landed in an actual dream.
Lake Como is one of those exceedingly rare places that not only lives up to its considerable hype but is also capable of surpassing it. The beautiful northern Italian lake has a long-time reputation as a playground for the glamorous, the artistic and the powerful – a rollcall of Italian aristocracy, Napoleon Bonaparte, the great opera composer Vincenzo Bellini and, in more recent developments,
