Stresa, Lake Maggiore & Lake Orta, Italy
Isola Bella
“One of the great joys of travelling through Italy is discovering firsthand that it is, indeed, a dream destination.” – Debra Levinson
After two fabulous days exploring Lake Como and Lake Garda and the towns of Como, Bellagio, Varenna, Verona and Milan it was time to move on to the main event of this vacation.
The meeting point was the Bristol Hotel in Stresa on the shores of Lake Maggiore. Many thanks to the fantastic Guiliana Manzoni who was our tour manager and host on this trip.
We took the train from Milano Centrale to Stresa. In fact, during this entire trip we took several trains across Italy becoming quite the expert navigators and figuring out train schedules and platforms etc.
The tracks were out of commission for a stretch that included Stresa, so we took the train to the last operable station and then transitioned to a bus that was waiting just outside the station to the Stresa train station where we took a taxi to our hotel. In total a trip that would have cost approximately 200 euro from our hotel in Milan or a 145 Euro from the Milan Malpensa airport cost us approximately 9 Euro per person by train.
The Milan Central Station is a beautiful old building that is as much fun to explore as other architectural marvels in Italy.
Our room was beautiful with a terrace facing the blue waters of the Lake. We dropped off our luggage and decided to go explore the grand promenade that led from our hotel into the center of the town.
As it turned out we never made it to the center of the town, instead we paused along the waterfront at a little cafe to enjoy gelato and take some pictures of all that we could see.
Unfortunately, the sun was nowhere to be found the next morning as we drove along the lake towards Lake Orta. We picked up our guide from a local village close to San Guilio which was our destination this morning. The public ferry that we boarded was relatively empty and the rain decided to start coming down hard as we disembarked.
Fortunately, this part of our excursion was indoors as we explored the beautiful church with its gorgeous painted mosaics.
Another ferry boat dropped us off in the pouring rain to the town where we took a walk to explore what we could see in the rain. I decided to part ways with the group and instead found a nice cafe and treated myself to a hot Capuchino seated at a table by the water protected by a clear plastic cover.
After a short respite for lunch at the hotel and a chance for many of us to change our wet and damp clothes we were bound to Isola Bella the beautiful island palace of Prince Borromeo.
The gardens and sculptures were magnificent and while rain threatened, and all was wet and damp we were able to walk through the outdoors relatively dry ourselves.
The garden is famous for its white peacocks which seemed to be around along with several babies. I however did not find these peacocks impressive. It's possible that the rain had their feathers all droopy and bedraggled.
The inside of the palace is magnificent. It was set up to a status symbol of the family's wealth and the beauty of the art furnishings, architecture, and artwork definitely impress.
This spiral staircase connects the basement to the upper floors.
For me these lower rooms with their motif of the sea decorated with shells and other elements of the sea are truly impressive. Apparently when Napoleon came here, he refused to sleep in the guest chambers instead he insisted on sleeping in these beautiful rooms.
Our evening wrapped up in the small fisherman island with a scrumptious dinner.
It was time to move on to the Piedmont region where we would explore the foods made from rice, truffles, Barolo wines, chocolates and hazelnuts.