L&F Italy Austria & Switzerland

Not such an early morning this morning as breakfast is included in our stay, but it wasn’t served till 8:00am. We headed out from BB at circa 09:30 and as the weather was very pleasant and sunny, we decided to go down to the lake and do some touring of the islands.

The first task was to arrange some sort of transport across to the islands.
This was managed without issue, and we were soon sailing towards Isola Madre (translates into Mother Island). This is the main and largest of the three islands that make up what’s called the Borromean Islands in Lake Maggiore, the other two being Isola Bella (Beautiful Island), and Isola Dei Pescatori (Island of the Fishermen).
This group of islands is named after the dukes and counts of Borromeo, a family from Florence which has its roots in around the 13th century and still have prominence today.

Isola Madre has magnificent gardens and a beautiful palace ( the outside of which looks like it needs some work). Walking through the palace and gardens provides fantastic views of the lake, the vegetation and wild life. The islands infrastructure was severely damaged by a tornado back in 2006, and is still being refurbished even today.

A boat then came along and picked us up to take us to Isola Dei Pescatori. This is the smallest of the three islands and is very much a restaurant and cafe island, with a smattering of the houses of locals. The setting of some of the restaurants was magnificent with tables and chairs almost directly next to the waters edge. You could well imagine a sumptuous, lavish romantic dinner on a warm summers evening of local fresh fruits of the lake.

The weather was starting to turn, as the forecast thunderstorms began to roll in. We caught the next boat to Isola Bella at around 12:30 and began to explore this beautiful island. The main features of this island was again a palace and gardens, both with brilliant views over the lake and back to the mainland towns of Stresa and Baveno. The palace here was much more lavish and we’ll maintained than the one on Isola Madre – it had recently hosted a family wedding back in 2015.
The thunderstorms were now above us, so we moved through the points of interest of the place. Before long it was teeming canines and felines – lucky to have a small umbrella that somewhat protected us until we reached our boat that would take us back to the mainland.

A late lunch of local pizza back in Stresa, which gave us a chance to sort of dry off. Curiously, the thunderstorms disappeared almost as quickly as they showed up, and by the time lunch was done, the sun came out again.

Feeling somewhat adventurous, we went for a drive along the lake road in both directions from Stresa to see what else was around, but clearly, Stresa is where it’s all happening.
Later in the afternoon, the weather closed in again, so outside activities were somewhat curtailed.

It was a good opportunity to catch up on some blogging, net surfing etc.

Up reasonably early this morning as we had a few things things to sort out, namely, breakfast, getting some cash and checking out of our hotel.
The breakfast and checkout were without challengs however getting the cash out was somewhat of a concern. There was a major bank around the corner from our hotel, with lots of ATMs, but when we turned the corner, we were confronted by about 10 guys, sleeping rough on the forecourt outside the bank. That put paid to any thoughts of getting cash out. There seems to be a sizeable problem with people sleeping rough and beggars in a lot of European cities – I had seen the same in Santiago De Compostela. I spoke with our guide yesterday about this very issue, but he could not provide a solution. Even though Milan as a region only has 3percent unemployment, it would seem that this is not enough to overcome the issue. I sense it’s becoming a problem of our times.

We left the hotel and headed for the airport, to pick up our car for the next few weeks; we arrived at the airport without issue, but once there, we could not find the Peugeot Leasing office.
We searched throughout the arrivals area, but no luck. Eventually, we found the general area for hire cars, but no Peugeot Leasing office. In exasperation, we asked a guy from Europe Car if he knew where they were. He advised us that as far as he knew, we should have contacted them a few days ago to let them know we were coming, doing that they could deliver the car. Fortunately he was kind enough to help us contact the office, and as it happened, Peugeot had arranged a car for us via an agent. They organised for us to be picked up and taken to the place where the car was. Long story short, we eventually received the car at around 12.

By this stage, the weather had turned from a lovely sunny morning, to an overcast, rainy afternoon. The drive from Malpensa airport to Lake Maggiore was stressful but uneventful. Driving on the other side of the road takes full concentration and focus; it’s not like at home, where you drive on autopilot most of the time.

We reached Lake Maggiore and in particular the lakeside town of Stresa at around 1:00pm and checked into our place – a B&B named Lo Scoiatolo E la noce, a pleasant enough place perchef high above the town, in a fairly quiet, rustic area. Because of the inclement weather, we were unable to see much in the way of lake views. After checking in and getting a bit of a rundown of the place, Massimo gave us maps and suggestions of what we might do in the afternoon.

We had some laundry to do so we headed into town to do just  that , also have some lunch, and have a closer look at the town. There are lots of places to see around here but we thought the weather was going to be adverse, so it was not going to be a good idea to do anything extensive.

After some searching for a parking spot, we finally parked in a public area and set out on foot to find the laundromat. Whilst that was running we had some lunch at one of the vast numbers of cafes, restaurants and bars.

When lunch and laundry were done, we decided to stay around town, as the weather had improved considerably – it was now sunny again, so we roamed the streets of Stresa, checking out knick knack shops, icecream places, bars etc. We also took a walk along the lake promenade and took in the wonderful views. There were many tourists around, mainly German, French and English, but we also came across some Australians.
We eventually had dinner in town as well and drove home about 8:30, did a few things and called it a night.

Our activities tomorrow will again be Governed by what the weather dishes up!!!

Frances arrived yesterday afternoon, and by the time I landed in Milan from Santiago and caught up with her (I arrived at a different terminal to hers and Malpensa is a big airport), it was late afternoon. By the time we reached our hotel in Milan (hotel Berna), it was close to dinner time. We were both pretty tired, so we had a quick local dinner and called it a day. It was a bit disappointing because we had originally planned to do some city surfing when we got in but Frances flights were delayed by enough time to make that untenable.

Today we arose early, as we had to rearrange our luggage, get some breakfast,  find our way to La Piazza de Santa Maria Delle Grazie, which was somewhere in Milan, for the start of an organised city tour. After figuring out how to use the subway and asking a couple of people for directions, we arrived at the designated spot with some time to spare.

Our tour guide, Simone, was going to walk us through some of the iconic attractions of Milan. First up was Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. It was in a small local Benedictine Monastery, in what used to be the monk’s mess hall. Of course, now it is a tightly controlled and monitored air conditioned room. Simone took us through the intricacies of the painting, which, because of the scope and scale of the work took some time. There were some bizarre facts and events relative to this work – a couple of hundred years ago, due to refurbishment of the monk’s kitchen next door, they enlarged a doorway which resulted in Jesus’ feet being cut off; also during the Napoleonic reign, the room which houses the painting was used as a stable

Next Simone showed us the beautiful monastery cloister. We walked through the upper class area of Milan where all the well to do people lived.

Just close by was the Sforzesco Castle, a magnificent, well preserved castle which was built in the 15th century and was inhabited by various dukes and Milanese rulers. It now houses several museums and art collections. There are so many pieces of art in these places that it would be impossible to quantify and categorise, it is almost beyond comprehension.

We walked past the statue of Garibaldi, responsible for the unification of Italy, into a street famous for its old world stores, onto the oldest part of Milan, an area which used to house the court house, the town hall and other important civic buildings. Finally we came to the Piazza Del Duomo, which is Milan’s magnificent cathedral, built almost exclusively in white marble. It was a very impressive structure with more than 100 individual spires. Unfortunately, being Sunday Mass time, no visitors were allowed in, So we were disappointed not to be able to check it out inside. Simone told us that it is the 4th largest Cathedral in the world, which was a surprise to me, as I have seen the Cathedrals in Burgos, Leon and Santiago De Compostela and thought they’d be in the same league. The tour then took us through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele ii a beautiful covered shopping mall which comprises many exclusive shops and restaurants; the Galleria was named after Italy’s First king; this area is the home of famous brands like Prada, Georgio Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, etc, all very exclusive and expensive stores. Our final stop was the La Scala theatre, probably the most famous opera theatre in the world. It didn’t look very impressive from the outside, but the tour did not take us inside either, so I can’t say too much about it
After lunch, we wandered about the shopping areas even made a purchase or two.
We had planned to visit nearby Bergamo, so once again we hopped onto a train which  after 50 minutes or so took us there, and the a funicular, to take us up to the old city – la Alta Citta.
It was a fascinating medieval area jam packed with buildings, churches, museums and of course the customary cafes, restaurants souvenir shops etc. It was a pity we only had a couple of hours to explore, because it looked like a place that was worth further exploration.

We reached our hotel close to 7:40, both pretty tired, so a quick dinner was in order and then some