Italian Lake Country

View from our hotel porch onto Lake Maggiore

We are now in the Italian Lake Country and today our walking holiday begins. There’s a 50 percent chance of rain, but we’re not going to let that bother us. We’ve been looking at the weather for weeks and knew that our time here was likely to be foggy and rainy.

Travel here yesterday was a bit more stressful than we had anticipated. The first part was easy enough. A water taxi picked us up at our hotel and dropped us at the Venice train station. We did get taken for 10 euro by a guy who grabbed our luggage to “help” us into the train station, but we considered that a lesson. Then we easily found our train to Milan and sat in the first class seats, which cost just a few euros more than the regular seats. The car had a great luggage area so it was easy to store our too-much-too-heavy-bags. It was a comfortable trip.

When we got to Milan, things changed. The train to Stresa offered only one class of seats and no easy way to store the luggage. We found a couple of seats right at the entry door. The place to store the luggage was a rack overhead, high overhead. We couldn’t lift our bags up there. Our suitcases are too heavy. That just wasn’t happening. So, we sat in our two seats and piled some of our stuff int he seat facing us and pulled our bags in front of us, which meant we had no leg room.

It also meant no one could sit in the one seat facing us. The train was packed with people, many searching for a seat, while we used one for our luggage. I stressed out about that the entire trip. Betsy did not.

After the train stopped, we had to manage our luggage down stairs and back upstairs again before getting out of the station.

Every. Single. Year.

We say we’re not packing this much. We’re not making lugging our luggage such a big part of our trip. Yet, here we are…again.

We took a taxi to the ferry port and jumped right on our ferry to Isola Superiore, where our hotel is located. It was very hazy, but still beautiful. Betsy is convinced there’s a fire somewhere that’s causing some of this haze. She says she can smell smoke in the air. Me, not so much.

Hotel Belvedere is nice and our room has a porch with a great view of the lake.

We walked around a bit. The island is small but has a quite a few hotels, restaurants and a few bars. However, wedding parties and other events have overtaken it this weekend. We did find a deck where Betsy had a glass of wine and I had a cold beer, then back to our hotel for a greatly anticipated dinner.

Good food, finally

The food curse didn’t seem like it was going to end. First, we were offered a snack on the train that was inedible.

We were hungry at dinner. We had not eaten anything since breakfast. Betsy likes tartare and carpaccio, so she ordered beef tartare as the first course. Honestly, it was a pile of raw meat with some cream cheese on top. It was intimidating when they placed it on the table.

It was okay, for what it was. We did not eat a lot of it.

Then, Betsy ordered beet gnocchi. The woman loves beets so I knew she would order that, even though she’s had gnocchi already. I ordered ravioli. I wasn’t taking any chances on any lake fish, which I’m sure I will love. But, I just wanted to be certain that I got something I would like.

Betsy loved her gnocchi, and I tasted it and it was quite good. However, it looked terrible. Pinkish potato dumplings with a green pesto sauce…just not pleasing to the eye. It looked pepto bismol pasta to me.

Mine, on the other hand, was beautiful and delicious.

We finished our first good dinner by splitting tiramisu. So yummy.

Gotta go catch a ferry and a train and get walking.

-30-