When Toronto-based travel advisor Nicholas Ruge boarded the inaugural sailing of the Scenic Eclipse, he expected to be impressed by Venice and Dubrovnik. He didn't expect a freshwater lake in northern Italy to stop him in his tracks and quietly rewrite everything he thought he knew.
At a Glance
Lake Garda offers bespoke, untouched luxury that escapes the tourism machine surrounding Lake Como. The destination attracts honeymooners, hikers, and families seeking alpine trails and unhurried retreats, remaining known primarily to locals and European travelers rather than international crowds.
The drive from Milan to Lake Garda takes about three hours. For most travelers, it would be little more than a transfer. For Nicholas Ruge, it became the defining moment of an entire voyage.
Ruge, a Canadian travel advisor with a reputation for building deeply considered itineraries, had planned this trip himself as a familiarisation experience aboard the Scenic Eclipse, the ultra-luxury superyacht operated by Scenic Cruises. The inaugural sailing would carry him from Venice down the Adriatic Coast, through Croatia, Montenegro, and back up the Italian coast to Rome. He had researched every port. He knew the highlights. He thought he knew Italy. Then the valley opened up around Lake Garda, and the mountain ranges came into view.
"I was surprised at the beauty and the scale that Lake Garda has to offer and the fact that it feels very bespoke, untouched and exclusive," Ruge recalls. "It's not very touristy. It's not crowded and it's known mainly by locals and Europeans alike." He pauses on the contrast with the region's more famous neighbour. While Lake Como draws A-listers and camera-toting tourists from around the world, Lake Garda offered something rarer: the feeling of arriving somewhere that hasn't yet been handed over to the tourism machine. Honeymooners seeking lakeside luxury, hikers hungry for alpine trails, families on unhurried retreats. This, Ruge says, is the Italy that most itineraries skip entirely.
A Journey Built on Seamless Transitions
After two nights at Lake Garda, the itinerary shifted toward Verona, where Ruge boarded a train for Venice. The decision to upgrade to a premier comfort class ticket turned out to be one of the trip's quiet revelations. "I would highly recommend it because you get to sit back and relax on this beautiful scenic journey through different Italian countrysides before you arrive in the floating city of Venice," he says. The train ride, he now tells clients, is not a transfer. It is part of the experience itself.
Venice arrived the way Venice always should: by water. A speedboat whisked Ruge from the station to his hotel, the surreal geometry of the city rising around him as the boat carved through the canals. From there, embarkation onto the Scenic Eclipse introduced what would become one of the journey's most consistent pleasures: the seamlessness of it all. Unlike the vast ocean liners that anchor at distant shipping terminals on the outer edges of port cities, the Eclipse's superyacht scale allowed it to glide directly into the heart of each destination. Ruge describes the relief this produced on board as genuine and immediate. "Compared to larger ocean cruises that have larger ships and vessels, this was a surprising and relieving moment for everyone on board, as it allowed us to optimize our time on land in each port and not have to stress or worry about not making it back in time for our sail time."
Hvar, Dubrovnik, and the Case for the E-Bike
As the Eclipse worked its way south, touching ports in Hvar, Dubrovnik, Montenegro's Kotor, the Sicilian hill village of Taormina, and the luminous island of Capri, Ruge was accumulating something more valuable than photographs. He was accumulating expertise. Nowhere was this more vividly illustrated than in Hvar, where the ship's complimentary e-bikes transformed what would have been a gruelling three-hour hike into a breezy ascent to the summit of the port's ancient fortified city. At the top, the group ate a regional lunch, caught their breath, and looked out over the Adriatic. Not a drop of sweat had been earned.
Dubrovnik followed a similar pattern. E-bikes carried the group from the port directly to the old city walls, eliminating the need for local transport and freeing up time and budget for what actually mattered: the exploration itself. These are not tips Ruge found in a guidebook. They are the product of having actually been there, having made the choices, and having felt the difference.
In Lipari, the small Sicilian island, the schedule was deliberately loose. A full morning and evening in port gave passengers room to wander without a clock overhead. It was there, wandering without a map or a timeline, that Ruge stumbled into a beautiful patisserie tucked into the village's narrow lanes, and found himself sitting down to an authentic local lunch with no particular plan and no particular hurry. Those are the moments, he says, that no excursion can manufacture.
What the Trip Taught Him About His Clients
The Scenic Eclipse is not designed for every traveler, and Ruge is precise about who belongs on it. Affluent professionals marking a milestone, baby boomer retirees ticking off bucket-list destinations, food-focused explorers who value elevated hospitality but still want the freedom to slip away from the group and get quietly lost. Budget-conscious travelers, those who prefer to plant themselves in a single destination for weeks at a time, or those who want the gritty authenticity of local living rather than curated luxury, would be better served elsewhere. This clarity is itself a product of first-hand knowledge. Only someone who has actually sailed can know, in their bones, what kind of traveler will flourish on board.
For Ruge, the practical learnings were equally significant. He now understands the exact rhythm of embarkation and disembarkation aboard Scenic Cruises. He knows how long each regional transfer takes, how to layer pre- and post-cruise nights in ways that deepen the experience rather than exhaust the traveler, and why booking airfare directly through Scenic can save clients several thousand dollars through the line's bundled fare offers. He knows to pack light, because the Eclipse's 24-hour onboard laundry facilities make overpacking an unnecessary burden. "This was a substantial value add," he reflects, "in terms of giving me the tools and resources and understanding to know what to expect when planning experiential travel without feeling too ambitious, but also striking the right balance between fun, exploration, food and relaxation."
The Advisor Who Goes First
What separates a great travel advisor from a well-read one is the difference between knowing a place and having felt it. Ruge returned from this voyage not simply with a list of recommendations but with a precise, lived understanding of what his clients will experience at every turn of the journey: how long the train ride feels, what the mountain air in Hvar smells like at the top of a summit reached by e-bike, how the pace of Lipari invites you to stop rushing and simply be somewhere.
The lesson he carries forward applies far beyond Italy and Croatia. On every future trip, regardless of destination, he says he will look for the Lake Gardas, the overlooked stopovers and unexpected pre-cruise additions that transform a good itinerary into a remarkable one. It was the lake that nobody put on the brochure that opened his eyes to how much a well-placed extra night can change the texture of an entire journey.
As for what comes next, Ruge is already looking east. Next spring, he plans to travel to Japan with National Geographic, completing a multi-day tour across all five islands, including Okinawa. It is a lifelong dream with a personal dimension: Ruge is a former international Judo competitor, and Japan is where the sport was founded. He intends to earn his black belt there, in the country where the martial art was born. The journey, like all his best ones, will be part professional discovery, part deeply personal pilgrimage, and every insight he brings home will find its way into the advice he gives the clients who trust him to go first.
