24th day of Sumer Vacation: in which we voyage to Isola Bella

Isola Bella is one of the three habitable islands in Lake Maggiore. (The other two are Isola dei Pescatori and Isola Madre) It's home to astonishingly beautiful gardens and a castle stuffed with artwork. The grounds are home to several white peacocks and peahens, which make the most astoundingly awful screeching noises.

Isola Bella was the center of command for the region for many years. Napolean and Josephine stayed 2 nights on the island. The Strasa Conference of 1935 was held there, in one of the final attempts to curb the ambitions of Hitler's Germany.

The ferry ride is only about 10 minutes each way, with great views for all of it. The castle itself is gorgeous. The grotto in the lowest level is crazy-cool, although I don't know what those rooms actually got used for. Also, the view into the lower gardens from the grotto rooms was just gorgeous:

There are several nice-looking cafes and restaurants outside the grounds, but we hadn't budgeted time to eat there. Next time, I would build in an extra hour and have a drink and a snack at one of the restaurants by the docks. As it was, we just had lunch at the (not very impressive) cafe within the garden. The high point of lunch was definitely my MIL's flower salad:

The gardens are extensive. Not as many flowers as I'd thought, but lots of amazing statuary.

On the way back from the ferry, we had gelato at a great place - Langola del Gelato -  I had "perla nera" which translates to Black Pearl but is actually chocolate with rum and chunks of dark chocolate. Nice music outside; too. I didn't take photos of the musicians but I should have - they really looked like The Civil Wars although their singing wasn't quite as good. They were incredibly good for street musicians and we threw a few Euros into their guitar case on our way out.

41st day of Summer Vacation: the movies you watch on airplanes

On the way over: Charlie Wilson's War (coincidentally, I was also in the middle of reading the book) a lot of fun and very good performances by Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

On the way back: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Holy shit this was good and I completely see why it got all that love at the Oscars last year. Later, I read that Frances McDormand is actually 60 in real life, and had suggested playing Amanda's grandmother rather than mother, but they felt that it needed to be a mother-daughter relationship and just had her play a woman in her 40's. Given that the character, Mildred, has led a tough life, I thought that the aging worked fine.

The Post: also very good. Holy shit, Meryl Streep is just in a league of her own. Also, very interesting story and description of the time (1970).

Justice League: possibly the worst movie I've seen this year. No, seriously. Makes "The Covenant" look like high art; at least it had a coherent plot and a comprehensible villain.

23rd day of Summer Vacation: in which we explore Stresa

We're safely esconsed in our lovely apartment in Stresa. It's got a tiny elevator for luggage but is clearly meant to be a walk-up. Our place has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a large living-dining room. The deck is small but can hold a couple of chaise lounges and a 4-person table. Also a drying rack, because although we have a laundry machine, there's no dryer!

We were all pretty jet-lagged by the time we drove into Stresa on Thursday. We unpacked a bit and walked downtown to find dinner; we just walked until we found someplace quiet. The woman spoke good English, and the menu had an English section... we were too tired to wrestle with translating Italian! It's called La Botte Trattoria and comes highly recommended by several guidebooks.

I had wide noodles with saffron cream sauce and mushrooms. Also baby artichokes cooked in butter and garlic. It was really good!
FIL: eggplant ravioli with a concentrated sundried tomato garnish (really good)
DH: Gorgonzola risotto with pear puree (he didn't love it)
Elder: Milanese chops (thin veal, breaded and fried) and french fries (very good)
MIL: Cod in tomato and polenta. I thought the cod was overcooked but the polenta and sauce made a great combo
Younger: spaghetti carbonara (very good, no visible bacon)

Then we went down the street for gelato. (Gelateria - good prices, good gelato, although not the best we had in that city.)

The tourist area in Stresa has about a dozen gelato places and two dozen restaurants, all within about 5 blocks of each other. I got postcards and Bergamot soap.

My FIL and I went to the Friday market in Stresa. (Open 6-2, I believe) It has lots of clothes, leather items, and tourist gear. There's a smaller food area, where I mostly failed to get any good pictures. Sorry! You'll have to envision vans with umbrella awnings that pop out of the top to make the stall.

The sausage and cheese vendors give you free samples, but they're also very pushy! Very few people spoke very much English - they kept trying Spanish, German, and French on us. I got a blue shawl, and we got sausage, cheese, and cookies. Also pre-cooked chicken and pork ribs, very good. Then we found a tiny little bakery, run by Americans, and got a huge round loaf of whole-wheat bread that was extremely good.

Now off to see the Isola Bella, a tiny island in the middle of Lago Maggiore.

21st day of Summer Vacation: in which we travel to Italy

We are in Italy!

We flew Hartord to Philadelphia, then to Heathrow London, then to Milano Linate.

I HATE Heathrow while it's under construction. We spent almost an hour total on busses, just trying to get from one terminal to another. The whole place felt like a nightmare, involving long lines for the bathrooms, no obvious place to buy breakfast, and no public water fountains. I'm pretty sure that the tap water is potable but I wasn't going to take chances... the last straw was when they forced us to check the violin, which may have permanently damaged it. (UPDATE: hooray for carbon fiber violins! It survived.)

On a lighter note, I read two entire novels (Proxima by Stephen Baxter and White Nights by Ann Cleeves) and watched Charlie Wilson's War, which I enjoyed mightily.

We then drove to Stresa, Italy. It's a vacation town on the shores of Lago Maggiore. The drive down is terrifyingly steep, but the views are amazing.

And that's it for today! Tomorrow, I think we're going to visit one of the islands.

27th day of Summer Vacation: in which we visit Isola Madre

Isola Madre is another of the three inhabited islands in Lake Maggiore. We left on an early ferry, and took 5 stops to get there; it's about a 30 minute ride. The day was hazy and overcast, but not too hot.

Similar to Isola Bella, the two primary attractions are the garden and the castle. On Isola Bella, you have to do the castle tour first to get into the gardens. On Isola Madre, you have to walk through a large part of the garden to get up to the castle. The walks direct you to a single path around the island and upwards, with potential alternate routes clearly blocked off and labeled.

The gardens were lovely and cool at 10am. The flowers were amazing, especially the "water lily as large as my head" varietal.

We saw a number of tiny little lizards:

And the grounds, generally, were just lovely and provided some great views:

We then went into the castle, which felt less formal than the one on Isola Bella. The pictures are larger and better lit, and are very nice. Some of the Borromean countesses were gorgeous! Or else had very talented portrait painters. There was not as much explanation of the paintings, which I did miss. The castle held three giant puppet theaters and many mannequins in period costume, which were more than slightly creepy.

We then went outside to see more of the gardens, and had foccocia and croissants by the water lily pond. My MIL got mobbed by some very aggressive sparrows.

We admired the aviary and the free-roaming birds. The island is famous for its white peacocks, which are loud and like to scream at you.

We also saw a number of blue (traditional?) peacocks...

 plus one fantastical creature that seemed to be a mix of the two. Edited to add: possibly this cool bi-colored bird was a peahen.

We then rode the ferry back to Stresa, and I confess that I failed to get a good photo of Isola Madre going in either direction.

The rest of the day: met up with DH and Younger Son at the dock. Went to get sandwiches, once again at Cicinin Panini al Metro. All were very good, although the vegetarian one had beets so I just had a small nibble of it. Also gelato, again at Langolo del Gelato. I really was tempted to get more Perla Nera, but I saw they had Violetta and I love that flavor, so I ended up with Violetta and Mandarinetta and both tasted great but were rather too sweet. This is why I usually get chocolate, coffee, or nut flavored gelato.

I might not bother blogging about packing up and driving over to Lake Como; the weather was lousy and I didn't take any good pictures.